Concordia: EV Complex sneak peek tour is a multipage tour by pictures of the new Integrated Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex. This building is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it encodes in the building an intergration of visual arts and computing/engineering – not a normal mix. Second, because it was built in downtown Montreal, they had to build up and there are a number of interesting ways they get around the problems of building up. They have these three floor atriums with spiral stairs that connect departments and they have high-speed escalators and elevators to move people up quickly.
Scumware
M. E. Kabay has a paper in ACM Ubiquity about viruses, malaware and scumware, Some Notes on Malware. It is a long piece (about 21 printed pages) that introduces the subject of viruses, gives a history, and ends up with a discussion of “scumware.” What is scumware, you ask?
Scumware is any software that significantly changes the appearance and functions of Web pages without permission of Webmasters or copyright holders. For example, a number of products overlay banner advertisements with other ads, sometimes for competing products. Scumware may add unauthorized hyperlinks to a user’s view of a Web page – sometimes using links to possibly objectionable sites. Such programs can interfere with existing hyperlinks by adding other destinations to the intended target. In addition, some products install themselves without warning users of these functions; others bury the details of their Web-page modifications in the extensive legalise of end-user license agreements.
I guess the idea is that such software puts scum on the clear surface of your web pond.
Podcasting: rabble radio
Wayne Macphail of W8NC alerted me to the new rabble radio – fresh Canadian podcasts from the left channel. It is a new feature of rabble.ca for which Judy Rebbick is the publisher (and Wayne is on the board.) Given the CBC lockout, this could become an alternative source of “radio” news. Wayne did a series of podcasts for the McMaster Faculty of Engineering and has been developing interesting ideas about how to use podcasting.
Now, what could do with podcasting in the university?
Since Otar Left … (Movie)
I don’t normally blog movies I’ve seen, but we just watched Since Otar Left … and it was one of the most touching movies I’ve seen in a long time. It takes place mostly in Tbilisi, Georgia and ends in Paris. The three main characters are a grandmother Eka, daughter Marina, and grandaughter Ada who are dealing with each other, life in post-independence Georgia and Otar, the missing brother of Marina (and beloved son of Eka.) The family are francofiles and Otar has gone to work in Paris where he dies in an accident. Like the movie Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Marina and Ada conspire to pretend Otar is still alive. Unlike Good Bye Lenin! the deception isn’t really about politics, doesn’t descend into farce, and leads to a touching conclusion for Ada. I found the movie dealt well with life in Georgia for an educated family without being about Georgia. It ultimately focuses on three generations of strong women, offering one of the best depictions of an independent grandmother I’ve seen. All three actresses are terrific, but Eka (who, according to the distributor is a “90-year-old former dental assistant and fledgling star Esther Gorintin”) is a character we almost never see in Holywood films.
A must see.
Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) from IBM
According to this Reuters article, Search concepts, not keywords, IBM tells business, (August 8th, 2005) IBM is releasing their UIMA SDK (Unstructured Information Management Architecture Software Development Kit) to developers as open-source.
According to an IBM Overview the UIMA provides tools for improving text searching through “analysis technologies, including statistical and rule-based Natural Language Processing (NLP), Information Retrieval (IR), machine learning, and ontologies.” Unstructured information includes not only text, but audio, video and images. This is thanks to Mike Rowse.
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/uima/
Continue reading Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) from IBM
Lemur Multitouch Control by JazzMutant
JazzMutant
has developed a multitouch control panel called Lemur which is being distributed in the US by Cycling ’74 (who also are responsible for Max/MSP.)
Lemur is basically a touch screen that can be programmed to display a virtual instrument or control that will accept multipoint touch input. The programmed controller can then be used to control things using the appropriate interface. You can develop virtual instruments and so on. Could this be used to create interesting text environments? This is thanks to Matt Patey.
Facade: Interactive Drama
Matt pointed me to a story in Slashdot about a Procedural Arts free interactive drama called Facade.
From the developers:
Facade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and story-intensive interactive entertainment. Facade is freely downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Facade, you, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and TripÔø?s lives Ôø? motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.
There is also a conveniently mirrored copy of a New York Times article Redefining the Power of the Gamer by Seth Schiesel (June 7, 2005) which discusses the innovations behind Facade. If I undestand it, the developers have built the AI equivalent to a set of laws of physics so that you don’t have to script the interaction. Instead you use ABL (A Behavior Language), a drama manager, a rule language and a discourse management framework to describe the characters, their goals, the units of the story, and natural language understanding. Very cool. Lets hope this idea gets woven into games.
Buzz Engine: Online Analysis
According to a Globe and Mail story, Buzz cuts through the on-line rumour mill, (Jerry Langton, August 4, 2005, Globetechnology Section) Accenture researchers have developed a technology called the Buzz Engine that tracks topics through lists and blogs. It looks like it does something like the culture tracker we developed, graphing the relative frequency of keywords – real-time text analysis.
Here is a quote from Gary Boone, PhD: Weblog:
At Accenture Technology Labs, we have developed the next generation of search engine. Itís a kind of summary engine that focuses on online buzz or discussion. Online Audience Analysis is a buzz engine that interactively shows how much buzz there is on a given topic. You can search for topics of interest and see how much public attention that topic receives. Is anyone talking about the new Xbox? Are more participants in technology discussion sites talking about iPods or about Creative Zen Micros? Online Audience Analysis can show you.
Lemur: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots
I was looking for a new touchscreen interface called Lemur and came across, LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. They built robotic musical instruments that can perform in installations. Check out the videos.
Echelon doesn’t seem to work
A story about how the British intelligence services have been closing down al-Qaeda related web sites, Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out (from the The Sunday Times, July 31st, 2005), comments that automated electronic intelligence gathering systems like Echelon don’t seem to work. In other words text-analysis systems don’t work if people want to subvert them by using simple codes or spamming the net. See my previous posts on Carnivore Documents.
Does this mean it is unlikely to be helpful to students of textuality?