The British Library’s Turning the Pages site uses Shockwave technology to let folks read rare and important manuscripts online in their original form. Da Vinci, Chaucer, the Magna Carta. Not a huge selection so far, but this one should be allowed to grow and grow. The British Library really appears to be entering the 21st century.

Phone cameras + complex barcodes = instant information. At least I think that’s what this means. See also the SmartMobs take on this subject along with the mention of PaperClick (which the Ferret covered last year). [Thanks to Vangorilla] Hmmm…so you embed special barcodes around the place which people can photograph and decode on their phones as they wish. The result is the ability to transfer lots of information from place to place using the phone as the translator. Now…

Panasonic has announced ‘the world’s smallest flash memory card’ – the miniSD. Sigh, gosh another memory card standard. What are we up to now, 5 or 6 new formats? ‘…announced today its worldwide launch of miniSD Memory Cards in three capacity sizes — 32MB, 64MB and 128MB…has outstanding functions and performance in a tiny form factor that is only 40% of the volume of the standard SD Memory Card…While the new cards were designed especially for use in mobile phones,…