Lazy Web Weekend Request : Lazy Linking is actually one part of a complex idea I had to enhance academic environments. For those not caught up, we created an auto-linking system for Particletree that determines keywords of a post through Yahoo’s Term Extraction and then links them using unobtrusive javascript and Y!Q search.
My initial context for Lazy Linking was to apply it to a blog that was a running dictation of a person’s speech. Basically, a user walks around with a binaural microphone and a digital recorder that timestamps wavs (ideally mp3s) of everything he says out loud (these recorders actually exist). The device would be rigged to say a palm pilot (or could BE a palm pilot) that connects to a wireless network and ftps the audio files to a server. The server processes the audio files using a speech-to-text processor and then posts the transcript and the podcasts up to the blog like any other entry with the appropriate timestamps. The transcript would then be Lazy Linked so you could have a dynamic version of your words. If you limit the Lazy Link to just your domain (this can be done with Y!Q), you could reveal hidden connections between your past, present and future.
I had first thought this would be great system for academic institutions. Professors use the device/system during lectures and just refer students to a web site where the students can find the podcasts and transcripst. The professor can then go back and create additional links as needed to make the blog/lecture more useful. But obviously this could be used in business meetings, courtrooms, radio stations, basically anywhere you’d want to have a dynamic archive of live communication.
I’ve been sitting on this one for awhile, boys and girls. The only thing I ask is that you make the device pretty.
> “I’ve been sitting on this one for awhile”
Well, there’s this Vannevar Bush guy, who has been sitting on it for sixty years :-) …
Seriously, here is a text I’d like to point you to: As we may think by Vannevar Bush (not related to the US presidental clan). It was published in 1945 and predicted a lot of interesting stuff. Now the technology of course sounds a bit silly from today’s perspective, but that’s understandable (I mean, if we’d write down what’s cool technology, how would that sound in 2065 …). If you get past the small picture, it’s just mind-blowing what is in this text: it predicted a vast set of documents with links between them, all accessible from a researcher’s desk (doesn’t matter that he thought along the lines of microfiche, not HTML), and among other things, the device you’re outlining, under the name “Vocoder”.
Definitely worth a read. It’s totally amazing … such a precise feeling for what folks implemented half a century later to celebrate it as the grand new surprise.
Everyone needs a hug.