Tools for Knowledge Junkies: Document Cloud, CALAIS , Linked Data

For all of the knowledge junkies out there, here are a few things that might fuel your passion for interactive information exploration and consumption. Although the tools below were adopted by people in journalism/news related fields, I think that they have potential for use in education and other fields. I'm interested in learning more about how people from different disciplines currently use these tools, and I'd also like more to this list.

CALAIS: "We want to make all the world's content more accessible, interoperable and valuable. Some call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the Semantic Web or the Giant Global Graph - we call our piece of it Calais. Calais is a rapidly growing toolkit of capabilities that allow you to readily incorporate state-of-the-art semantic functionality within your blog, content management system, website or application." CALAIS is published by Thomson Reuters
MORE ABOUT CALAIS
PR Video for CALAIS:

How CALAIS Works:

CALAIS for Publishers
CALAIS for Bloggers
CALAIS for Software Providers
CALAIS for Content Managers
CALAIS for Developers
Open CALAIS Content Maps by Jer Thorp

"Jer Thorp is a software artist, writer, and educator. He is a contributing editor for Wired UK. He is currently Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times."

DOCUMENTCLOUD
"DocumentCloud runs every document you upload through OpenCalais, giving you access to extensive information about the people, places and organizations mentioned in each."

DocumentCloud Blog from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.
MORE ABOUT DOCUMENT CLOUD
DocumentCloud Merging with IRE 
Amanda Hickman, DocumentCloud, 6/9/11 (Note:  IRE = Investigative Reporters and Editors)
Newsrooms using Document Cloud
Document Cloud: Not Just For Journalists?  (Excellent article!) Konrad Lawson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/8/11 (Konrad is a Ph.D student in the history department at Harvard University.)
For Techies:  Document Cloud's VisualSearch.js | Autocomplete Faceted Search Queries
Losterium Posterious, 7/9/11


LINKED DATA

-linkeddata.org
"Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods. More specifically, Wikipedia defines Linked Data as "a term used to describe a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF.""

Tim Berners-Lee: The Year Open Data Went Worldwide

"....Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together." At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" -- for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up."-TED

LDOW2011: Linked Data on the Web workshop


COMMENT
I plan to share more information related to this topic in future posts.  I welcome input and links from my readers!

Multi-touch Update from Stantum

The people at Stantum have been working hard to improve multi-touch technology, focusing on smaller tablet-sized systems.  Stantum is a company I've been following for several years, from the time it was known as Jazz Mutant.  I have been impressed by Stantum's focus on the needs of people as well as the company's careful attention to important details.


I'm pleased to see that the company has an idea of how its multi-modal technology can support multi-touch in education:   "Ambidexterity and multi-modality are the two pillars of Stantum's core project – making the use of touch-enabled devices more creative and productive. Amongst others, there is one field of application where we truly see a soaring need for ambidexterity and multi-modality – augmented textbooks." -Guillaume Largillier


At the Society for Information Display's Display Week exhibition this past May, Stantum introduced a new palm rejection feature for its Interpolated Voltage Sensitivity technology. This technology provides users with a more natural way to interact with the interface and application content on tablets.   The technology supports Android's multi-touch framework and is also Windows 7 certified.  The palm rejection feature will be a welcome improvement for future multi-touch applications designed for education settings, where it is likely that  more than one hand - or person, might be interacting with content on the screen at the same time.


Below are two videos that provide a glimpse of Stantum's innovations:




Stantum's technology can enable ten simultaneous touches, is highly responsive, and supports high-resolution content. According to a May press release, "Palm rejection is available as an API (application programming interface) to Windows and Android operating systems on x86 and ARM platforms. IVSM touch modules are offered to OEMs through the company’s Qualified Manufacturers Partners, comprising tier-one touch-screen manufacturers with high-volume production capabilities. More information is available at info@stantum.com"


RELATED
Stantum's TouchPoints Newsletter (July 2011)


Stantum Whitepapers:
How to Evaluate Multi-Touch While Standing in a Store (pdf) - a great source of information.
Jim Meador, Pascal Auriel, Gauthier Chastan, Stantum
Specifying and Characterizing Tactile Performances for Multi-touch Panels: Toward a User-Centric Metrology (pdf) - outlines some important points!
Guillaume Largillier, Pascal Joguet, Cyril Recoquillon, Pascal Auriel, Axel Balley, Jim Meador, Julien Olivier, Gauthier Chastan

News from the HCI lab at UNC-Charlotte - Creative Interactions (Videos)

In the video below, Nathan Nifong, discusses and demonstrates his independent study work through the HCI LAB (Human-Computer Interaction) at UNC-Charlotte. He focused his work on creating a motion-responsive musical instrument that integrated movement, sounds, and graphics.


"We're trying to research anything and everything that will help to make computers easier to use." -Nathan Nifong


Thanks to Celine LaTulipe, for the link!


RELATED
To get a better idea about the HCI lab, a small, yet sparkling gem on the UNC-Charlotte campus, take a look at the following video:




"I get to create things, and to me, you just can't beat that!"- Celine Latulipe


Dr. Latulipe is known for her work with the Dance.Draw project, Interactive Surveillance, and tools that support things like bimanual interaction, collaboration, and creativity.

Summer Break: Music Apps, Multimedia, Kinect, My New iPad2, Tech-reading, Google+, Dancing...

I'm on summer break, which for me, means that I spend an increased amount playing/creating music and doing all of the other fun stuff I don't have much time for during the school year. I'm still exploring what I can do with my new iPad2 - there are so many music apps!  My favorite at this moment is Garage Band. It keeps me engaged for hours, and I can take it with me anywhere I go.  I'm also exploring iPad apps for education and students with special needs, since many of the young people I work with have autism spectrum disorders.  They all really love music.


Today, I came across turntable.fm, a "social-djing" website, from a link shared by Dimitri Diakopoulos.  I think it would be fun to play with.

Turntable.FM, The Fastest-Growing Music Service You're Not Using
William Fenton, PC Magazine, 6/23/11
Social DJing with Turntable.FM
Andrew Mager, 5/28/11

I'm still plowing through technology journals and zines from previous months - I had to skip over my stack to read the cover article of the most recent Communications of the ACM:

Algorithmic Composition: Computational Thinking in Music

Michael Edwards, University of Edinburgh, 2011

I LOVE the design of this cover. It would make for a nice interactive interface for an iPad music app. Or a larger touch-screen display. Or even a SMARTBoard! (BTW, My first computer-related course was Computer Music Technology, in 2003. My undergraduate honors research (psychology), years ago, focused on constructive cognition and music recognition/memory. This topic is dear to my heart.)

I've spent some quality time with my first grand-baby this summer.  Although his "screen time" is limited, given his age of 7 1/2 months, he enjoys playing with music on my iPad.  He likes the drums found in the iPad GarageBand application.  Here he is playing with NodeBeat, an app created by Seth Sandler and Justin Windle:

Most of his time is spent off-screen:





Over the last few months, there has been a surge of interactive touch-enabled apps for education, including some for young people with special needs.  This will be the topic of a few of my future posts.

Link: "The Old Internet Neighborhoods" -Message Boards, Forums, Chat Rooms, RIP? +more

In skimming through my RSS feeds today, I noticed that that Google+ has generated quite a bit of reflection about the evolution/revolution of on-line communities over the past week or so. In the article below, Virginia Heffernan reminisces about the days of the digital networking before the spread of broadband connections and Smartphones:


The Old Internet Neighborhoods
Virginia Heffernan, Opinionator, New York Times 7/10/11


Thanks to Bonnie Bracey Sutton for the link!


Here are some visual reflections related to Google+:

-Stephen Downes


-Brooks Bayne

-Abid Shaikh
-Abid Shaikh


SOMEWHAT RELATED

Google+ is Awesome, Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

Keith Kleiner, Singularity Hub, 4/6/11

What is Your Plan for Google+ Experimentation and Exploration?
Beth Kantor, Beth's Blog: (How Networked Nonprofits Are Using Social Media to Power Change)
7/7/11
The Evolution of Cyberspace: Virtual Worlds
Craig Harm, Sendsonline.org, 1/22/11
Throwback to the 90's: How Social Networking is Moving Back to Private
Lydia Leavitt, The Next Web, 10/17/10
Google+Facebook Extension Integrates Facebook Viewing and Updating on Google+
David Galloway, Lifehacker, 7/9/11
Note:  Apparently there was some problems with the extension, as mentioned in the update of the above article:"Update: We've learned that this browser extension has a lot of privacy violations and are retracting our recommendation of this extension. Please visit this Reddit post to find out detailed info on the problems and how to uninstall the extension from your system."  
David Galloway linked the following article from his post:
Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
Emil Protalinski, ZDNet, 7/5/11

What Do You Love: A Cute Multi-stream Search Engine from Google. Key in what you "love" and see what comes up!

What Do You Love (WDYL) is a a multi-search engine from Google that in my opinion, aims to facilitate topic exploration by providing people with a visual/multimedia array of "widgets" that provide tempting glimpses of a range of options for digging deeper into a topic.  


Words really can't explain it.  I suggest you try it out.  It is fun to see what comes up. Below is a screen shot of part of what came up when I keyed in "Interactive Multimedia Technology".   (If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll notice that the picture widget includes pictures I've posted on this blog over the past several years.)






















Key in your name and variations of your name to see what comes up.  Apparently there are a bazillion pictures of me in cyberspace, taken by my husband while I was relaxing on a cruise, one of my favorite pastimes:

RELATED
CHI 2011 WDYL Search Results
Google's What Do You Love (WDYL) Multi-Search
Rob D. Young, Search Engine Watch, 6/29/11
Google Asks "What Do You Love?" With New Service
Brennon Slattery, PCWorld, 6/28/11
What do you love? Google knows.
Regina Hope Sinsky, Venture Beat, 6/28/11


Thanks to Farhad Javidi for the link!