Friday, October 31, 2008

Helios Jazz Orchestra: Live in the Stacks Video





The Helios Jazz Orchestra: Live in the Stacks

On Oct. 21, the West St. Petersburg Community Library at St. Petersburg College hosted its second “Jazz in the Stacks” concert with the talented Helios Jazz Orchestra.


The 21-piece jazz ensemble, directed by David Manson, performed swing, bebop & Latin jazz arrangements. Its band members, with vocalists Rita Wilson and Joanna Rose, include some of the best jazz musicians in the Tampa Bay area.


Watch them on SPC TV on:

Sunday 9 p.m.

Wednesday 10 a.m.

Saturday 12 p.m.

Friday 8:30 p.m.



Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Helios Jazz Orchestra -- Live in the Stacks!

Helios Jazz Orchestra -- Live in the Stacks!
The West St. Petersburg Community Library at St. Petersburg College and the Friends of the Library proudly presents the Helios Jazz Orchestra -- Live in the Stacks!

The Helios Jazz Orchestra is a resident ensemble at St. Petersburg College. The 21-piece jazz big band is directed by Dr. David Manson and performs swing, bebop & Latin jazz. Its members include the best jazz musicians in the Tampa Bay area. Read more at: www.spcollege.edu/spg/music/helios/heliosroster.htm.

The library is located at 67th Street and Eighth Avenue N. on
the St. Petersburg/Gibbs campus. For more information call (727) 341- 7199.

Date: Tuesday October 21, 2008
Time: 7:30pm
Place: Library
Cost: Free!


Refreshments and snacks will be served.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Using word verification to help digitize books


Everyone has had to type a word or sequence of symbols to verify that they are a human before signing up for an online account like Facebook, Flickr, Gmail etc. I will have to type these words/symbols before posting this to various blogs. These verifications are also known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart).

A Carnegie Mellon University scientist, Luis von Ahn, calculated that people waste close to 500,000 hours every day typing these characters. Luis von Ahn consequently developed reCAPTCHA which connects all of this immense brain power to help digitize old books and he and his colleagues reported in Science that “over the last year Web users have transcribed enough text to fill up more than 17,600 books, with better than 99 percent accuracy.”


To read/listen to the story visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93605988.

To learn more about reCAPTCHA visit http://www.captcha.net/.