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the five drafts of the gettysburg address: a sophie bookOctober 9

Contrary to popular lore, Lincoln did not write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. Though given short notice that he was to speak at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, he had enough time to write two drafts of the address prior to November 19th, 1863. These he entrusted to his private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. The remaining three drafts were written well after the delivery of the address for inclusion in various charitable anthologies. Each draft differs slightly in wording and punctuation, most likely because each was written from memory.

This Sophie book compares the differences in the five drafts visually, provides information about the provenance of each draft, and features a reading of the address by Johnny Cash.

You can download it here. (.zip, 2.9 Mb) Make sure that you have Sophie or Sophie Reader installed.

By clicking on the title of the draft at the top of the text, the differences in wording will be highlighted, and information about the particular draft is displayed.

meanwhile . . . .October 6

My colleagues at the Institute and i are busy making some interesting things with Sophie 1.0. We're going to start posting them on a new institute website devoted to Sophie 1.0. [They will also be available on the OpenSophie site]

and the first document is . . . .October 6

An Experiment in Visualization: Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speeches from Truman through Obama and McCain.
In addition to the wordle.net visualizations in which the size of the word is proportionate to the number of times it is used, we've also included an audio recording and the full text for each speech. In order to encourage reader's to look closely at each speech, you don't see the name of the speaker until you decide to click on the word cloud to reveal it. Is that Reagan? Perhaps Clinton? it's very interesting trying to parse the differences and what they mean. Although there are still problems with the way that Sophie's comment streams are managed, we've enabled them here. Please if you leave comments for others, make them serious and not simply . . . ."testing" or "gee i wonder how this works." You can download it here. But before you do, make sure you download and install the Sophie Reader.

Mellon announces a $1.25 million grant for Sophie 2.0October 6

Last week the Mellon Foundation announced a $1.25 million grant to the University of Southern California for a java-based version of Sophie, which will be known as Sophie 2.0. In addition to improving on Sophie 1.0 in various ways, Sophie 2.0 documents will run inside the browser. The programming team is committed to working in the open as much as possible, so expect public releases of the code beginning in late November of this year. Sophie 2.0 itself is scheduled for release in September 2009, and yes, there will be a conversion path for Sophie 1.0 documents.

How do you want to read?October 2

(Photo of Tom Stoppard's book case, made by T. Anthony, via The New York Times.)

For the sake of travel and convenience, sure, even a Kindle is better than toting a book shelf with you on an airplane. But people still resist eReaders. Is it because eReaders cannot meet your reading needs, or because they're unaffordable and inelegant?

The media is brimming with iPhone and Android apps and speculations about eReading. Even literary blogs are tech-focused: Maud Newton dropped her iPhone in the subway, but didn't lose her place in her virtual book. And Chad W. Post ties up last week's "end of publishing" coverage with highlights from New York Magazine's comments (most of them are much more positive about eBooks than New York Magazine).

eReading devices haven't made an Android-esque debut, but they're chugging forward. Forbes presents a $850 iRex reader with a 10.2