Microsoft is working on a robot receptionist.

Also from Network World’s slideshow: The project’s code name is “Robot Receptionist.”

And “What It Is: A Robot Receptionist.”

Via James Fallows, who notes that IBM’s five-year projects are way cooler.

I was sharing this technique with participants in a blogging seminar I’m teaching in this week*, and I thought y’all might find it interesting.

This is a trick for making link-blogging even slicker than posting to your blog from Del.icio.us. Even if you’re not interested in link-blogging, some of the steps might be useful from an info-management perspective.

1. Enter the 21st Century and install Firefox 3. Revel in the brilliance of the AwesomeBar, which makes storing and pulling up bookmarks stupidly easy.

2. Install the glorious Foxmarks. Enjoy seamless access to your bookmarks and passwords from any of your Firefox-enabled computers, complete with robust controls over which computers can access what. Feel free to import your Del.icio.us bookmarks. You won’t be needing that service anymore (unless you require feeds for each of your tags). Mwa ha ha.

3. I’ve also installed Ex Bookmark Properties, which enables you to edit a bookmark’s description from Firefox 3’s default bookmark properties dialog.

4. Use Foxmarks to share as many bookmark folders as you desire.

5. Pipe the feeds from any shared folders into WordPress using the FeedWordpress plugin.

Done. Linkblogging is now as easy as bookmarking in Firefox. Links will post to your blog after Foxmarks syncs your bookmarks and FeedWordpress fetches the Foxmarks folder.

I used this technique to make a quick-n-dirty linkblog for the seminar.

* Yes, I realize I’m the least prolific blogger in the blogosphere, and the only reason I can even cling to that title is that I’ve got excellent blogmates. Never mind any of that. I intend to more than make up for my infrequency by employing this trick to great effect once the WordPress switchover is complete.

The NYT has a good article about US students getting their baccalaureates abroad (specifically in the UK and Ireland). It prompted, in order, the following reactions:

1. When I applied to college, I found myself anxious about the prospect of leaving Michigan. However, two years later, I would have transferred to a European university in a heartbeat.
2. I’m not sure how I feel about a more specialized baccalaureate — I’ve pretty much resisted specialization throughout my academic career — but generally speaking, so much of the UK system, from college entry to academic hiring, feels eminently sane when compared with the US.
3. “My top schools where I want to apply to are Oxford and the Sorbonne. My safety’s Harvard.”
4. Prediction: the schools listed will see their American apps triple next year, especially when word gets out that it’s easier for Americans to get in than it is for native Brits. (Cheapness is another factor, but in my experience working with college admissions, a secondary one.)

A terrific post by Blair Sanderson sleuthing the real-life identity of the fictional Vinteuil’s Sonata from Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way.

Since it’s at All Music Guide, there are also streaming samples of some of the contenders, including Gabriel Faur

Since 2003, I’ve made discs and MP3 playlists of my favorite music of the year to swap with friends. But this year, I just haven’t been feeling it.

I really like In Ear Park and The Walkmen’s new album, and I’ve listened to Dodos’ “Fools” a couple dozen times (my tastes are skewing folky in my dotage). And it may be too early to say, but “Single Ladies” is percussive and weird and anthemic enough to be this year’s “1 Thing.”

But mostly I’ve been tuned out. So, I ask the Snarkmatrix: What have I missed? What do I need to hear?

I just discovered this site, a collection of expositions of the fugues in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Some of Tim Smith’s writings are pretty opaque to those of us who aren’t trained in music, but many of his comments are accessible enough. (“If you think of the subject as a dancer, then the fugal process is one of finding a suitable partner. But what if the dancer has the ability to be its own partner? Well that is stretto. And stretto is what the C Major fugue is all about.”)

And the visualizations help, although I wish they were done in Flash instead of Shockwave. But hey, it was made in 2002.

Sarah Kerr reviews Roberto Bola

Card Catalogues, photo-word-art by Erica Baum. Downloadable at UbuWeb, via Al Filreis.

Read more…

* This is where it’s important to point out that legendary French anthropologist Claude L

… is easily Ben Vershbow, formerly of if:book.

The only post-IFB news I can find of him is a Book Expo Canada from June. I hope he is doing something appropriately awesome.