To mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries of George Orwell they're being published online "live" as a blog, 70 years to the day he wrote them. The project started August 9th, and so far the entries are about strangely bland stuff: the weather and the antics of catching some snakes at his home. More what you'd expect from Eric Arthur Blair (his real name) rather than deep insights into the mind that created Big Brother. This is his domestic diary, though... the political one (which starts September 7th) will make for very interesting reading. I wonder what Orwell would've thought of this idea, and indeed the slightly Orwellian society we seem to be living in.

Read More »

You may have noticed that we've got a bit of a Windows Vista takeover happening at the moment on Gizmodo. Part of that is having a hub dedicated to Vista, where Microsoft's "Professional Geek" Nick Hodge is blogging about helpful Vista features. One of the things he's mentioned - Turning the Pages 2.0 - is actually pretty awesome.

Essentially, it's digitised versions of 19th century (and older) diaries, books and records that you can read and flick through using Silverlight (there's also a plain Vista version as well). It's been done in conjunction with the British Library, and offers 15 of the library's most precious books up for you to read.

I hope that one day, in 150 years time, whatever technology has replaced blogs will come up with some awesome method of rediscovering everything you're reading today on Giz AU.

[Turning The Pages 2.0 via Giz AU's Vista Hub]