ThoughtMesh: Tag your writing. Join the conversation.

Screen shot of ThoughtMeshMatt sent around a link to ThoughtMesh, an original idea about how tag-rich online publishing might work. You can get an account and upload an essay (it encourages you to divide into chunks) or self-publish so your essay is meshed. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but it gives you contextual tag clouds to use to see related stuff.
Here is what Jon Ippolito says in his essay, ThoughtMesh Author’s Statement,

When Craig Dietrich and I set out to build ThoughtMesh, we asked ourselves how an ideal publishing tool for scholars would behave. We decided that we wanted a system that was distributed–not siloed away in a single database, but able to be published on any Web site anywhere. We also wanted all the essays to be connected to each other, by something less random than search returns, but more serendipitous than intentional hyperlinks.

A Brief History of Neon — New York Magazine

Image of Camel Ad

In A Brief History of Neon in New York Magazine I came across reference to Artkraft Strauss one of the first and most important makers of neon signs, ads and marquees. Artkraft Strauss dominated the design of neon signs for Times Square including the new year’s midnight ball-lowering. Artkraft Strauss is still around as a design and consulting company and they have a great archive of images of “100 years of commerce, design and Times Square celebrations”. It is a treasure of neon sign design in New York from the first days.

TheStar.com | Federal Election | Web outrage marks shift in Canadian politics

Alex Sévingy drew my attention to an article by Linda Diebel for the Toronto Star, Web outrage marks shift in Canadian politics (Sept. 12, 2008) that argues that Green leader Elizabeth May owes here inclusion in the upcoming debates to rapid voter reaction over the Internet.

Suddenly, in a very public way, ordinary citizens were empowered through their blogs, vlogs (videos) and online comment to the mainstream media, and they got what they wanted.

Alex himself is quoted in the article suggesting that it was Stephane Dion who broke the impasse.

“For the first time in Canadian election history, a grassroots activism influenced a leader to take a stand against the others,” he said. “As a result, the traditional media regulators had to concede that the populist approach was right.”

Adds Sévigny: “An authority figure opened the door. But, in my view, this is one of the last times the blogosphere needs validation of someone in authority.”

Given how short Canadian elections are one wonders if the speed of the Internet is the only way for voters to participate in the process, rather than just the vote.

High Performance Computing in the Arts & Humanities

Last April I helped organize a workshop on how High Performance Computing centres like SHARCNET can support the humanities. One of the things we agreed was needed was a good introduction to the intersection. John Bonnet agreed to write one and Kyle Kuchmey worked with me on examples to produce High Performance Computing in the Arts & Humanities. We hope this will be a gentle introduction to the intersection.

Kane Kramer: Inventor of the Digital Audio Player?

Image of DrawingI came across a story that Kane Kramer, and English inventor, invented the digital audio player and patented it in 1979 though he lost the patent. Here is an interview with the Guardian.

No. I like the iPod, but it feels a bit unfair to have to buy one. I could show you my drawings from 1979-82 and there is an iPod – same size, shape. It feels like mine.

Kane apparently testified for Apple when they were being sued by others.

The World of Dante

Image of DanteThe World of Dante is a totally renovated site from the University of Virginia (IATH) on Dante. It has some neat features. They use an image by Domenico di Michelino of Dante Reading from the Divine Comedy as a visual introduction to the site. You roll over the parts of the image and get an introduction to the project. The project also has a lot of media, including music that was commissioned to connect to references in the text to music. I heard some of this music at the New Horizons conference. This is a gem of a project even if sometimes paging the texts is slow – I’m told that it has to do with caching – just be patient.

Pushing Play

Logo A student of mine from last year, Jacob, who was one of the two who did the innovative Half-Life Havoc project, has started a gaming blog and company, Pushing Play. His company is developing game conference,

The Pushing Play Conference is all about bringing hardcore, casual, midcore gamers together, as well as Ludologists, game designers, and even non-gamers. By bringing these people together and giving them a forum to interact we can get a better understanding of the gaming community as a whole, rather than supporting the over-used image of gamers strictly being teenage boys.

Newsknitter: Knitted Visualization

Image of knitted news
Newsknitter is a project that gathers news from RSS feeds and then generates a visualization that can then be knitted into a sweater. Check out the images of sweaters knitted. This project has been exhibited at Ars Electronica and is the work of two PhD candidates at Kunstuniversität Linz. At first the idea of machine knitted sweaters of text visualization sounds like a conceptual art work with no future, but as I think about it, the idea of just-in-time information being visualized and used to generate stable material objects like a sweater sounds timely. All sorts of objects could have their designs generated on the spot and on demand from information off the net. Why should data be only visualized and not materialized?

Appropriation Art: 51st State Comic

Image of Comic CoverOnce I notice one comic being used to introduce computing issues I’m told of another. Google commissioned the Chrome comic, Gordon Duncan of Appropriation Art has released an interactive comic book 51st State that is about copyright reform in Canada and freedom of expression. It appropriates images and words from the internet and has links back out to information. A remarkable demonstration of how graphic arts can be political and provocative.

Thanks to Erika for this.