ZDNet asks if the Semantic Web can help Education. Jason Ohler is an educator who ponders this possibility on his blog. More generally, Jason poses the question of whether semantic technologies can help ease information overload by
- recognizing interesting nouns (e.g. global warming, Pink Floyd),
- deciding what verbs are applicable (e.g. define ‘global warming’, listen to ‘Pink Floyd’, ), and,
- organizing the results into a relevant and digestible summary
I’ve been meaning to write about various Use Cases for MashLogic and this gives me a good lead-in to ramble about how MashLogic can serve as an educational tool.
Education is Learning punctuated by Discovery. Learning provides the factual foundation; Discovery adds color and depth.
The English Vocabulary mash shows definitions for uncommon words. This mash was originally suggested by non-native English speakers, and by high school students preparing for the SAT. The Learning bit is easy enough – mouse over the MashLogic link to see the definition. We achieve this without disrupting the flow of content, with minimal attention shift. By preserving the context, retention is enhanced. Compared with the traditional flow of opening a new window and typing at a search engine, our approach makes for more seamless and effective learning.
The dotted blue links added by MashLogic also provide subtle visual cues that enhance exploration and discovery. The philodox administered a recumbentibus to the skybald. See what I mean? [ed: the previous bit may not come through if you are reading this through an RSS feed]
In a similar vein, the Wikipedia mash shows a summary, often accompanied by an image, for terms that correspond to Wikipedia topics. Learn about topics as you consume content and Discover more by letting your eyes wander over the landscape of the web page.
Activate the Recent Headlines mash to dig deeper into alternate sources of information. You can select categories that educate (e.g. Science, Health) and those that inform (News, Business) or personalize the mash with your own feeds.
2008-10-22
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Our first public release is now behind us. We came out OK. I’d like to express gratitude to TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and others who took the time to try out MashLogic and express their opinions. We apologize for the scarcity of invitations, but rest assured that if you signed up, they’ll be on their way soon.
Take Back the Web
It’s a snappy slogan, perhaps a bit bold. But for us, it’s a Business Imperative. We want to give you control over what gets linked, where those links take you, and how you interact with those links. For example:
- Control the hover vs. click behavior of the callouts (popups) through the Configuration -> Options panel.
- Suspend/Restart MashLogic by clicking the swirly icon in your browser toolbar.
- Drag the mashes up or down the stack to specify their precedence. Prefer TechCrunch information over Wikipedia? Just drag the TechCrunch mash up a few notches.
Bad MashLogic, No Donut
There seems to be a perception in some quarters that we remove or modify links and content, and it’s just a matter of time before you are sucked into a hellish vortex of spam and ads.
Dear me.
Our investor David Cowan has stated our position eloquently and explicitly. Please take a look.
While we undoubtedly make some boneheaded choices of terms to link, we will not touch the original links unless you instruct us to take action. And when you do ask, we pop up a little warning. Under default conditions all original links are available. We may add those dotted blue links under them, but all you have to do is click (as you always have) and you’ll get to the destination specified by the publisher. There is a nuance — if you have configured MashLogic with Show pop-up on mouse click selected, the original link will appear at the top of the callout.
Please feel free to direct comments to feedback at mashlogic dot com. We’re also tuned in to your tweets @mashlogic on Twitter.
Could we please have that donut now?
2008-10-14
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It’s taken us a few months and a season to deliver on the hazy promise made about a year ago. We went through numerous internal betas and in keeping with the Pareto Principle, spent most of 2008 tweaking, tuning, and polishing, the UI, features, and heuristics of our application.
We’re now ready to see if MashLogic can chart the tempestuous Ocean of Real Users!
Our home page states our mission. Hyperlinks define relationships on the web. With the advent of self-serving techniques like internal links, SEO, and link farms, content publishers have diluted the utility of hyperlinks. We intend to liberate the link from their clutches and let you take back the web! Some refer to this as Benevolent Hyperlinking, but we’re not quite ready to print up the T-Shirts.
Our Firefox extension scans web pages and adds links to interesting Things. You tell us the kinds of Things you care about (e.g. baseball players) and we’ll find them on a page and link them to authoritative sources (e.g. MLB). We’ll link conceptual Things to Wikipedia (and show you a summary definition in a little pop-up), people Things (you know what I mean) to their LinkedIn profiles, company Things to CrunchBase, let you stream music by Artist Things, and a whole lot more.
See the dotted blue links on this blog (on Firefox & Flock)? These were auto-generated by MashLogic. Our extension does this for every page you visit. Personalize, Engage, and Discover!
We are currently sending invitations to interested users. This helps us manage growth and get a handle on issues of scaling and performance under Real World conditions. Please sign up on our website for invitations. Comments are welcome.
2008-10-10
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