Forgive me, I've been slacking & Oh No Robot

In spite of my best intentions to keep up with at least one cool new-to-me technology/tool/gadget/widget every week, I let the holidays and then the rush of the new school year get the best of me. Must have been all the fruitcake! So this is my first appearance since.... the LibraryThing lesson.

This week's cool tool is Oh no Robot

With its Google-esque minimal-image screen and cute mechanical mascot, Oh no Robot is certainly innocuous looking enough. But what, you ask, does it DO?

Ah....

Do you like webcomics? Are you a closet Unshelved fan?

*Aside* If you haven't encountered Dewey, Mel, and Buddy the Book Beaver yet, where HAVE you been?

Would you like to be able to search for your favorite characters, specific episodes, or strip series?

If you answered YES to any of those questions, then Oh no Robot is your thingie. It's a personalized web comic search and transcription tool.

Yes, that's right, you can even help transcribe your favorite comic - If the author of your favorite webcomic has set up an Oh no Robot account, you, the reader, can assist in making all of the episodes easy to find. How it works: the comic author creates an account; the author, and any interested readers transcribe the content according to simple directions provided on the transcription form; the completed transcription goes to the author for review, and if approved, is added to the searchable database - pretty nifty, huh?

For a fun few minutes of screen flipping, see if there are any un-transcribed Unshelved episodes here - it's pretty popular, so don't be surprised if someone's already beat you to the latest one.

But if you can't find an Unshelved episode to transcribe, you can always take advantage of the site's random comics browser or help transcribe another comic's episodes. Or take a chance, and Let the Robot decide!