The Buzz

As if gamers haven’t killed enough hours channeling Jimi on Guitar Hero, here’s another outlet sure to please aspiring rock gods. Harmonix, creator of Guitar Hero, has announced Rock Band, an all-new platform that allows users to perform music from major rock artists, this time as a virtual band, complete with drum, bass/lead guitar, and microphone peripherals. The game will span various genres of rock and feature master recordings from the catalogs of major publishers, including EMI, Sony BMG, and Universal. Rock Band is slated for release in late 2007 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. www.rockbandgame.com.

Traipsing to the Library of Congress and thumbing through a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac is probably not in the research plans of most high school students. But kids can click through the stained and dog-eared pages of the book online, thanks to a new Web site called Rare Book Room. Created by Adobe Systems founder John Warnock, the free site is stocked with digital impressions of approximately 400 books and manuscripts by Lewis Carroll, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and others. Included, too, are music sketches written by the hand of Beethoven and Mozart. Many items are from Warnock’s personal collection. “Most people will never be able to see these books,” he says. “And they need to.”

Sagebrush Books is now operating under the name Tandem Library Group. “We have made a point of working in tandem with school libraries for a half-century and of providing exceptional customer service in library collections development,” says Tandem CEO Bob Hebrink. Company subdivisions Tandem Library Books and Tandem Library Services focus on books and library services, respectively, providing a single source for collection development. www.tandemlibrarygroup.com.

They do April Fools’ day big at Google. Code-named “Dark Porcelain,” the TiSP project boasted yet another Google innovation: home wireless access through your commode. An associated Web page came complete with illustrated instructions for self-installation, “a quick, easy and largely sanitary process,” reads the fun copy. Included, too, was an FAQ on TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) featuring three levels of tiered service—Trickle, The #2, and Royal Flush—a TiSP discussion group, and hyperlinks to actual Google services. The elaborate setup reminds us that Google can do a joke site that’s heads above many actual sites.

Geekdom is learned, not innate. For those seeking legitimate tech cred, O’Reilly Media and the University of Illinois have joined forces to create the O’Reilly School of Technology. The new online program offers IT students courses toward certificates in client-side Web programming, Linux/Unix system administration, open source programming, and more. Oreillyschool.com.

What does it take to squeeze the juice from a single orange? A whopping 345 steps, as demonstrated by a team of students from Ferris State University who won the 19th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest recently held at Purdue University. With a machine comprised of a toy train, a Slinky, the game Operation, and other playthings that required 3,000 hours to create, the team from Big Rapids, MI, grabbed top honors, competing against seven other teams from around the nation. The contest honors Rube Goldberg, the cartoonist known for drawing whimsical machines with complex mechanisms to perform simple tasks.

Do you know what it means to seagull* or get a little shack-wacky**? These and other terms representing fringe English are defined in the Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary. The resource is compiled and edited by Grant Barrett (left), editor of The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and cohost of the language-related radio show “A Way With Words.” www.doubletongued.org.

*v. to hang back and await an opportunity to benefit from desirable circumstances found or created by other people. **adj. restless or irritable from staying indoors for a long period; stir crazy; afflicted with cabin fever.

Interactive whiteboards aid student achievement, according to a report on the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) by European Schoolnet (EUN), a partnership of 28 education ministries from across Europe. The findings, largely based on studies conducted in the UK, found that using whiteboards creates a faster pace in the classroom, enhancing interaction between teachers and students. The result? Improved test scores, especially in English, math, and science, compared to student performance without interactive whiteboards.

Books. We’ll take them in any form, even via cell phone. That’s the premise of Wattpad, a service that enables you to share works such as Animal Farm, The Godfather, a Simpson’s quote collection, or your own stories, all on mobile phones. The platform, which already boasts 100,000 users, is graduating from beta with a few new features: offline reading, Blackberry support, and additional languages. To access the application, go to get.wattpad.com on your phone’s browser and follow the link to download. You traditionalists may scoff. But just wait ’til you’re on line at the bank—with nothing to read.