“A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) can be used as a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.” (From Wikipedia.)

“Cognitive psychology is the school of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language. It had its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who studied intellectual development in children. Cognitive psychologists are interested in how people understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response. Cognitive theory contends that solutions to problems take the form of algorithms—rules that are not necessarily understood but promise a solution, or heuristics—rules that are understood but that do not always guarantee solutions. In other instances, solutions may be found through insight, a sudden awareness of relationships.” (From Wikipedia)

“An application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that a computer system or program library provides in order to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program. An API differs from an application binary interface in that it is specified in terms of a programming language that can be compiled when an application is built, rather than an explicit low level description of how data is laid out in memory. The software that provides the functionality described by an API is said to be an implementation of the API. The API itself is abstract, in that it specifies an interface and does not get involved with implementation details.” (From Wikipedia)

“A web crawler (also known as a Web spider or Web robot) is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner…This process is called Web crawling or spidering. Many legitimate sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a Web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam). (from wikipedia)

New York-based corporation that aims to improve translation technology.

“Based on a core technology that understands natural language, Meaningful Machines is opening new avenues in text mining, search and retrieval, machine translation, natural language interfaces and artificial intelligence.” (From the home page)

“Running software that took four years and millions of dollars to develop, Carbonell’s marchine—or rather, the server farm it’s connected to a few miles away—is attempting a task that has bedeviled computer scientists for half a century. The message isn’t encrypted or scrambled or hidden among thousands of documents. It’s simply written in Spanish.” (From Wired Magazine.)

Starter Links: Meaningful Machines | Evan Ratliff’s “Me Translate Pretty One Day,” in the Dec. 2006 issue of Wired Magazine

A website that allows users to catalogue their personal libraries.

“LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth” (LibraryThing website).

Starter Links: LibraryThing website

Transliteracies Research Report By Kim Knight

“The Codex series is an ongoing cd-rom project that consists of four projects by four different talents in the digital medium exploring narrative, design and the interactive. Somewhere between a compilation and a digital fanzine, The Codex Series is a laboratory, something to share and talk about” (The Codex Series website).

Starter Links: The Codex Series website

Designed by Frédéric Eyl, Gunnar Green and Richard The, “Moving Canvas” is a system that projects words and images on the inside of subway tunnels. The project was conceived and designed in 2005 as part of a digital media class at the University of the Arts Berlin.

“Affordable mobile video-projections will offer a vast range of different forms of use and abuse of this technology soon. While this will certainly be of great interest to the advertising industry it could also extend the idea of re-conquest of public space often only reduced to graffiti and streetart.

Our contribution to this is the idea of a parasite. Parasite is an independant projection-system that can be attached to subways and other trains with suction pads. Using the speed of the train as parameter for the projected content, the projection starts with the train moving inside a tunnel” (Project page at University of the Arts Berlin).

Starter Links: Project page at the University of the Arts Berlin | High Resolution video | Frédéric Eyl’s website

Transliteracies Research Report By Kate Marshall

SnOil was conceived and designed in 2005 by Martin Frey, a student in a digital media class entitled “Sensitive Skins” at the Berlin University of the Arts.

SnOil uses electromagnets and ferrofluid to present viewers with with a liquid reading surface upon which words appear and disappear, leaving no trace behind. In addition to to being a reading interface, SnOil can also be programmed for simple interactive games.

Starter Links: Project page at the Berlin University of the Arts | A video demo of SnOil

An online knowledge base for building courses and textbooks.

“For authors and instructors worldwide, Connexions combines free authoring, course building, and publishing tools with an open-access content repository (see cnx.org). For students, it provides modular, interactive courses that are freely accessible. In Connexions, an author can create “modules” of information that are small documents intended to communicate a concept, a procedure, or a set of questions. String some modules together, and you have a web course or textbook, or weave a curriculum entirely of your choosing. Connexions directly challenges the current notion of a “textbook” by exploding it and asking different people to create its parts in a semi-structured but re-configurable manner, rather than having a single Maestro do it all and take all the credit. All Connexions content is open-licensed using the Creative Commons attribution license. All Connexions tools are free and open source.” (Connexions Overview .pdf file)

Starter Links: Connexions | Overview document

BuddyBuzz, developed by Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, is an e-reader for use with mobile phones.

“BuddyBuzz is the fastest way to read text on a mobile phone. With BuddyBuzz you get access to thousands of articles.

Read articles from CNET, Reuters, and select blogs, like Slashdot, Ross Mayfield, and Robert Scoble. Rate what you read and BuddyBuzz will predict what articles you like.

Upload articles to your personal BuzzBox for your own reading and share things you’ve written with any BuddyBuzz user.” (BuddyBuzz website)

Starter Links: BuddyBuzz | Persuasive Technology Lab

Britished-based company that specializes in using aritifical intelligence to “read” scripts and forecast their market success.

“Investing in and developing the wrong film properties is the biggest risk that faces studio heads. Parent companies and investor groups place studios under ever-increasing pressure to deliver Returns on Investment across an annual portfolio of films. Epagogix’s approach helps management of this most critical financial risk through accurate predictive analysis of the Box Office value of film scripts. Epagogix works confidentially with senior management of major film studios to assist in identifying and developing scripts, and in transforming scripts with low Box Office revenue potential into properties that can be profitably produced and distributed.” (From the Epagogix home page.)

Starter Links: Epagogix | New Yorker Article by Malcolm Gladwell

An application that allows users to scan whiteboards, documents, and business cards using a mobile phone camera.

Users of scanR take pictures of documents, whiteboards, or business cards using their mobile phones. scanR then converts the picture into a color .pdf file that is emailed to the user. Users can also elect to store documents online and to fax documents anywhere in the world.

scanR requires a minimum 1-megapixel camera to convert whiteboards and a minimum 2-megapixel camera to convert documents and business cards into .pdfs The program creates metadata about each file and also allows the user to add tags to categorize their own files.

Starter Link: scanR website

British-based company developing portable electronic reading devices.

“Plastic Logic is building the first commercial manufacturing facility targeted at flexible active-matrix display modules for ‘take anywhere, read anywhere’ electronic reader products. It will utilise Plastic Logic’s unique process to fabricate active-matrix backplanes on plastic substrates which, when combined with an electronic-paper frontplane material, will be used to create display modules that are thin light and robust. This will enable a digital reading experience that is much closer to paper than any other technology.” (From Plastic Logic’s “Products” page.)

Starter Links: Plastic Logic | Popgadget article | Financial Times article by Peter Marsh

Online resource focusing on electronic poetry.

“The EPC was founed in 1995 and serves as a central gateway to resources in electronic poetry and poetics at the University at Buffalo, the University of Pennsylvania’s PennSound, UBU web, and on the Web at large. Our aim is simple: to make available a wide range of resources centered on digital and contemporary formally innovative poetries, new media writing, and literary programming. The EPC itself makes extensive resources available through its E-Poetry and Author libraries. These libraries provide curated lists of resources on a focused range of authors for personal use, research, and teaching. Additionally, the EPC curates lists of links to similar digital and literary projects, related book publishers, literary magazines, and other resources. In addition the EPC offers substantial sound resources that will not be found elsewhere. These include the vast resources of the PENNsound and UBU archives and the award-winning interview and performances series of LINEbreak.” (From the EPC’s “about” page.)

Starter Links: Electronic Poetry Center | Chronicle of Higher Education article by Zoe Ingalls| Times Literary Supplement article by Paul Quinn

Robot-managed library at Chicago State University.

“The new library at Chicago State University has one ironclad rule: No students allowed in these stacks—only robots. Every book, CD, and DVD in the school’s $38 million facility is tagged with a radio-frequency ID chip. When a borrowed item slides through the return slot, the system identifies and sorts it. Human librarians shelve post-1990 materials in the traditional stacks and drop older stuff into file-drawer-sized bins. From there, it’s all robots—tall, forklift-style machines that run on tracks and stow the materials in a three-story high storage facility. No Dewey decmials? No problem. The computer knows where everything is and can hustle the correct bin to the circulation desk for checkout.” (Excerpt from Wired Magazine.)

Starter Resources: Chicago State University Library | Erin Biba’s article “Biblio Tech,” in the January 2007 issue of Wired Magazine

Apple-owned initiative that allows students and universities to share content online.

“iTunes U* is a free, hosted service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to their educational content, including lectures and interviews, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Based on the same easy-to-use technology of the iTunes Store, iTunes U also offers typical Apple simplicity and portability. Through iTunes U, students can download content to their Macs or PCs, regardless of their location. They can listen to and view that content on their Mac or PC, or transfer it to iPod for listening or viewing on the go. Instructors can easily post and change content on their own without impacting the IT department. And, of course, students can upload their own content to share with professors or with the class.” (From the iTunes U home page.)

Starter Links: iTunes U | related article from the Michigan Business Review

University of California sponsored research initiative focused on new media technologies.

“The Digital Cultures Project (DCP) brings together faculty and graduate students from across the UC system who are actively engaged with the history and theory of new digital technologies and the ways in which they are changing humanistic studies and the arts. It also serves as an agency through which faculty and graduate students who have not been actively engaged in these matters can learn about them in order to incorporate them in their future work. The project is based at UC Santa Barbara, where the English Department is the home to Transcriptions, an NEH-supported project concerned with digital technology in research and teaching. The Multi-Campus Research Group (MRG) sponsors five interrelated activities.” (From the Project’s home page.)

Starter Link: The Digital Cultures Project