“This tool is so useful you’ll wonder how you ever manged without it.”
bbcworld.com
MacUser
It's a real productivity enhancer, it's hugely powerful and it's free.
MacUser
CNN
You probably arrived here via a hyperlink. We hardly think about it now, but the hyperlink is a neat trick. It turns a word in a browser into an object that leads to more information.
Once you start "linking around," it gets addictive. Some suggest that all the hopping from one link to another influences how we think, making it harder to concentrate for long periods. (Read a novel lately?)
Some wish they could link outside of Web browsers. One blogger wrote she wants to "right-click" on people to discreetly learn more about them. (This after an event where she ignored someone she admires, not realizing who he was.)
A few emerging technologies aim to make more objects -- both in real life and in computers -- behave like hyperlinks. An upcoming version of the program Hyperwords, now limited to web browsers, will work with any open window on your computer.
The program is like hyperlinking on steroids -- combined with right-clicking on steroids. For example, highlight "100" and -- within the right-click menu -- convert that figure from miles to kilometers, or Fahrenheit to Celsius. Select the word "camera" for an in-place translation into Korean or French, or be taken to the Wikipedia entry for camera.
You could do all this manually at various web sites, but the program reduces the tedium and thus encourages you to explore.
It "allows all words to be associative in whatever way the reader feels is useful at the time," explains Hyperwords founder Frode Hegland. Hyperwords is a great tool.
cnn.com
The Economist
"The web has changed in many ways since it first emerged in the mid-1990s. The first web pages contained only text, and there was a big debate about whether pictures should be allowed. Today, by contrast, it is quite normal for pages to be bursting with photos, animated graphics, video clips, music and chunks of software, as well as text. In one respect, however, the web is unaltered: the clickable hyperlinks between pages are still the way users get from one page to another.
But now a Norwegian computer scientist named Frode Hegland has cooked up a new sort of navigation. His free software, a browser add-on called Hyperwords, makes every single word or phrase on a page into a hyperlink—not just those chosen by a website's authors. Click on any word, number or phrase, and menus and sub-menus pop up. With a second click, it is possible to translate text into many languages, obtain currency or measurement conversions, and retrieve related photos, videos, academic papers, maps, Wikipedia entries and web pages fetched by Google, among other things."
Economist.com
Information Wants to Be Liquid: “The web as we know it was invented by a British academic working in Switzerland. Is a Nordic academic working in Britain about to redefine it forever?”
“Liquid Information takes Berners-Lee's ideas and runs with them. Hegland's experimental system is geared toward allowing users -- not just writers and editors -- to make connections. Instead of just viewing websites, readers can change the way information is presented, or relate it to other information elsewhere on the web.”
wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66382,00.html
the new york times
Website leads to a tangent of a tangent of...: “Imagine a world where every word of every online article leads you directly to everything you did and didn't want to know about that word. Sound good to you?”
“The point is "to wake people up to the possibilities of interactive text," Hegland says on his website, where he notes that his mentor is Doug Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse. To show readers how this super-hyperlinked text might work, liquidinformation.org has set up a live demonstration using CNN.com as the guinea pig.”
nytimes.com/2005/02/10/arts/design/10liqu.html - The full text of the email interview with the New York Times.
the guardian
Talk time: Frode Hegland: “Imagine that behind every word you have a supercomputer just waiting to act on your commands based on that word. Say you're reading a Guardian article and the words Vint Cerf are there. You can point to Vint Cerf once, get a menu item that says 'Show Only Paragraph with Vint Cerf', so it allows you to take two things and send it to the server ... the word and a command. Those commands can be anything: "Search Google for Vint Cerf", "Show Glossary entry" etc, as long it can be programmed. Anything can be programmed if it can be said explicitly.”
guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1176739,00.html
the international herald tribune
Beyond the screen: “To have a conversation with Hegland about interactive computing and software design is to think about the world in fresh new ways and to believe again that technology can change lives.”
“With Web design," he said in an interview, "anything older than two years is ancient. But when you go back to the people who conceived it all decades ago, you get to see the big picture of what they really meant, and it's all new again."
iht.com/articles/130557.html
econtent magazine
The Liquid Information Project is Hyper2: “Frode Hegland, a researcher at University College London (UCLiC), gives hyper new meaning. The native Norwegian, whose thought processes take tantalizing tangents to exponential extremes, wants to return to the one of the Web's founding principles: interactive information that actually informs. To do this, the student of advertising and Human Computer Interaction joined forces with Doug Engelbart, who is arguably the founder of interactive computing... The Liquid Information project's initial focus is to enhance the interactive nature of text online in extremely clear, simple ways. It aims to deliver tangible user-interface benefits (through research findings and test results) and to provide an Open Source, information digestion environment based on its Hyperwords Menu”
econtentmag.com
bookofjoe
I have seen the future of the internet, and it is sweet: “I'm just back from exploring one of the most extraordinary websites I've ever visited. This site was created by Frode Hegland, a researcher at University College London Interaction Center, working with Mikhail Seliverstov, a programmer in Russia.Their goal: turn every single word of every online text into a hyperword, a word you can click and then Google, look up in a dictionary, or do any number of other things with. But don't waste your time here: visit the site and try the demo. I tried the CNN one and then my own site, and I was absolutely blown away. Awesome, jawdropping, you pick the word, there's no hyperbole possible here. Amazing.”
bookofjoe.com/2005/02/15
pc mag
Beyond Wordplay: “What if every word in a Web page became a link, and each link could point to more than one place? That's the vision behind Liquid Information, a joint project headed up by British researcher Frode Hegland and Doug Engelbart, inventor of the mouse. The project's goal is to rethink how the Web works, so that you might, for instance, click on someone's name in a news story to read more about that person. "We want to wake people up to the possibilities of interactive text," says the project's mission statement.
pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1770201,00.asp
national information standards organization
Information Wants to Be Liquid: “University College London researcher Frode Hegland is the brains behind Liquid Information, a project to make each word in a Web document a potential hyperlink that can refer to multiple destinations as well as pull up a diverse array of background context from all over the Web. The home page of the Liquid Information project sums up Hegland's initiative as "an effort to turn Web 'browsers' into Web 'readers.'" The experimental system Hegland has devised is designed to enable users to establish links and change the presentation of information, or relate it to other data elsewhere online. The Liquid Information project's ultimate goal is to allow users to process data in any conceivable manner.”
niso.org/news/newsline/NISONewsline-Feb2005.html#196669
the arlington institute
Information Wants to Be Liquid: “When Tim Berners-Lee first developed the web at CERN, he intended it to be an interactive back-and-forth, akin to projects like the Wikipedia. But in the monolithic web of today, you're either a consumer or a producer, never both at the same time. However, Hegland's experimental system is geared toward allowing users - not just writers and editors - to make connections. Instead of just viewing websites, readers can change the way information is presented, or relate it to other information elsewhere on the web.”
arlingtoninstitute.org/futuredition/fe_archive/fe_08_2archive.asp
other references, short mentions
Howard Rhengold’s Smartmobs site. Librarian & Information Science News. Thinkerlog. IFTF blogger. Dave Farber’s IP list. Econtent Institute. Ideant.
Articles which are not in English are not mentioned, though a quick Google search will find them.
