Eric Blue's Blog

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) project at Tufts is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.

At its core, the Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is a concept and content mapping application, developed to support teaching, learning and research and for anyone who needs to organize, contextualize, and access digital information. Using a simple set of tools and a basic visual grammar consisting of nodes and links, faculty and students can map relationships between concepts, ideas and digital content.

Concept mapping is not new to the educational field. In fact, the benefits of concept mapping as a learning tool have been documented by over 40 years of cognitive science research. VUE provides a concept mapping interface, which can be used as such, or as an interface to organize digital content in non-linear ways.

Check out the VUE screencast here. According to an email I just received this afternoon, VUE 2 was just released with the following features:

• Tools for dynamic presentation of maps
• Map merge and analysis tools
• Enhanced keyword tagging and search capabilities
• Support for semantic mapping using ontologies
• Expanded search of online resources (Flickr, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Twitter, PubMed, etc.)
• Ability to publish your VUE maps directly to Fedora digital repositories and Sakai

Posted by EricB at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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The memex ( "memory extender") is the name given by Vannevar Bush to the theoretical proto-hypertext computer system he proposed in his 1945 The Atlantic Monthly article As We May Think. The memex has influenced the development of subsequential hypertext and intellect augmenting computer systems. Bush's vision for the memex extended far beyond a mechanism which might augment the research of one individual working in isolation. In Bush's vision the ability to connect, annotate and share both published works and personal trails would profoundly change the process by which the "world's record" is created and used.

Excerpts from Bush's article:

"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. ... The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected. "

-- As We May Think

And

"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."

It seems to me that the Bush's concept and proposal of a memex, while fanciful and even bordering on futuristic fantasy (having been written in 1945), is obviously becoming a reality for normal, everyday people. Yes, there are definitely parallels with hyperlinking systems, the WWW (yes, it's 2008 and I said WWW), and the recent surge in social networks. There is nothing particularly revolutionary with this comparison. However, the real power in this type of personal knowledge manager is putting the memex to use for personal applications. By putting to use, I mean augmenting your personal knowledge (learning new information and recalling existing knowledge) and creating a "trusted system" for storing your most important and cherished information.

Much of my time the last few months has been devoted to the topic of Personal Knowledge Managment, and in particular, the application and use of Semantic Wikis. I've been experimenting with a few different applications of my own memex, and so far the results have been very promising. So far, I'm working on the following:

• Personal Journal - Basic forms for filling out a diary/journal entry
• Dream Journal - Detailed form and record of dreams. Complete with semantic, table-based, and calendar views (Simile)
• Travel Log - Travel details including geographic information and integration with Google Maps
• Personal Learning History - Tracking all books and audio/dvd courses completed in the last few years. Complete with semantic, table-based, and calendar views (Simile)

In some upcoming posts I plan on sharing how to implement these applications.

Credit: Thanks to Jamie at Semantic Wave for bring the work of Vannevar Bush to my attention a couple years ago. It wasn't until recently that I really started making progress in implementing some of these ideas for my personal use.

Link to the online version of the Atlantic Monthly article is here. And, excerpts of this post were taken from the Memex article at Wikipedia.

Posted by EricB at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

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Back in March, I began evaluating some open source Document Management Systems (DMS) to help compliment my wiki-based Personal Knowledge Manager (PKM). That's a little bit of acronym-overload. But, in simple terms I really am looking for a way to easily store, categorize, and retrieve a number of my documents related to research and learning (PDFs, Word Docs, etc).

I quickly discovered that although my wiki can manage attaching simple documents, there was no way to easily store metadata for the documents or search within the wiki itself. As I alluded to in my original post, I narrowed down my search to 3 main DMS choices: SCAN, Alfresco, and Knowledge Tree. Of these three, SCAN (Smart Content Aggregation and Navigation) ended up being the most feature-rich and least complicated. Alfresco and Knowledge tree are both fantastic products, but they ended up being too complex for my needs. I believe this ultimately boiled down to the fact that my DMS is for one person (me) and not an entire team or company. Many features related to roles, access restrictions, and document workflow aren't a concern to me right now.

At a high-level, SCAN supports the following features:

• Java-based UI with a multitude of browsing, searching, and tagging functions (Can run on a variety of platforms - Linux, Mac, & Windows
• Support (with plugins) for PDF, Word, Excel, XML/XHTML, Plain text
• Tag cluster browsing for both Documents and Del.icio.us links
• Sophisticated tagging and text analysis

A full list of features can be found here. I received an anonymous tip the other day (well, it was actually from a guest Google chatter) that SCAN version 1.3 was just released. This release has a number of UI enhancements for browsing the document collections, adding document annotations, and better management of metadata through document properties.

For the most part, SCAN ended up being my "Killer App" for Document Management Systems. One slight drawback on my wishlist is that there is no web-interface for SCAN. Most of my time spent searching, browsing, and tagging will more than likely be on my primary desktop where SCAN is installed. Using the SCAN GUI is fine for 90% of the time, however if I am remote I would like to have access to my documents.

For the short-term I've simply configured my wiki to display my document repository so I can download documents as needed. What's convenient is that I can preserve the document directory hierarchy however I like in the file system. And with SCAN, I can choose to create multiple document repositories and organize & aggregate my document collections with tags. Sure, I can only get a hierarchy (file system) list for my web view, but this is OK for now.

Long-term, I would like to experiment with adding the following features for my own needs (I am a fan of Eating My Own Dog Food or Sipping My Own Champagne):

• Add support for password-protected PDFs (if this is possible with Lucene)
• Add support for indexing and searching MindManager mindmaps. This is a *huge* must have for me given the number of mindmaps I've created for my own research.
• Create a basic SOAP-based service layer on top of SCAN so I can access metadata, create tag clouds, and search from a web-interface. This web-interface will more than likely be a barebones MediaWiki plugin.

This, of course, will need to be added to my ever-growing Personal Pet Project Queue.

I'd highly recommend giving SCAN a whirl, especially if you're interested in wrangling a large number of documents. SCAN is simple, effective, & powerful. And, best of all, it's free!

Posted by EricB at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Every 6 months or so I mix things up and alternate my primary area of focus between studying philosophy and pursuing my creative technical interests (e.g. my multitude of pet/geek projects). I decided to switch gears a couple weeks ago and have been back into academic mode. My primary focus has been studying the history of philosophy; notable figures, major schools of thought, etc. I've also been creating a series of detailed mindmaps based on this research and hope to share those sometime next month.

Over the last 6 months much of my time and writing has been focusing on learning and personal knowledge management. So, it occurred to me that this might be a good opportunity to blend my interests in learning, technology, and philosophy. I've been using the Semantic MediaWiki for the past few months as my Personal Knowledge Manager and just recently started adding my own semantic data for major philosophers (date of birth, place of birth, influences, influenced by, school of thought).

I figured it would be uber cool (and geeky) to be able to query this type of metadata and aggregate it in the hopes of seeing new patterns. At a high level, here is what I'd like to do:

* View all philosophers on a timeline broken down by date and time period (Ancient Greek, Early Christian, Dark Ages, Modern, Post Modern, etc). Something like http://radicalacademy.com/diahistphil.htm.

* Map of philosophers based on place of birth, origin of school, or place of death.

* Graphical representation of lineage of influences by philosophers. This is somewhat similar to The Genealogy of Influence I posted about last year.

* Faceted Browsing on various metadata. Make something similar to the amazingly cool Elastic Lists?

In theory, this sounds very cool but could get complicated pretty fast. Luckily there are some great projects like Simile at MIT that solve some interesting problem domains. One particular subproject called Exhibit offers many of these features. I would just need to find a way to export my philosophy wiki data as RDF (which I believe it currently does) and reformat to JSON. This will definitely get some priority on my existing Pet Project Queue ;) More to follow later......

Posted by EricB at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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When I first started using knowledge management applications (mainly traditional outliners), I had hoped that I could find the "One True Application" or OTA. The OTA is the single killer-app that contains all the features I could ever hope for, solves all of my problems, and automagically helps organize all my information. Well folks, I've learned that the OTA doesn't yet exist. So, I've taken it upon myself to find a suite of the best open source applications to handle their areas of expertise (content managment, document management, search, semantic query, information discovery, and visualization). My focus for the past few days has been on Document Managements Systems (DMS).

I decided to switch gears and research DMS solutions for a few reasons. Here's the background: I'm now a couple weeks into my hunt for the perfect Wiki for Personal Knowledge Management. I hinted early on that I favored MediaWiki, and that certainly has held true. It required a little bit of tinkering around, and getting in the guts of PHP now and then, but I feel that I have a pretty sophisticated setup so far. I have a number of extensions enabled that enhance the wiki (the best of which is Semantic MediaWiki... more on that later).

I've managed to import some of my older personal journals, travel logs, and have an intriguing setup for my dream journal using Semantic MediaWiki (SMW), Semantic Calendar, and Simile Timeline. At this point, the wiki not only has my old journals, but a place to store my current projects and philosophy research.

Everything seems happy in Wiki-land, and I'm on the road to a great setup for a Personal Knowledge Manager. However, one major area that's lacking in MediaWiki (or most wiki's in general) is document management. I have a huge amount of PDFs, Word docs, and Mind Maps that I need to categorize and have ready access to. But, I've found that MediaWiki is very lacking in how it handles Attachments. By default, attachments are only expected to be images. You can lift the image-only restriction and add additional file types like .doc and .pdf, however this will only get you so much mileage. Here are the major limitations I've found:

1. Inability to natively search attachments (default search is only for wiki content)
2. Lack of support to add MetaData about documents(author, keywords/tags, dates, etc). You could use Semantic Forms to help out with this task, but why reinvent the wheel?
3. Organization of documents (taxonomy). You could attempt to fit the attachments in with the existing wiki categories, however the document hierarchy can end up being a bit different than your wiki content, and it's probably better suited to growing organically (by itself).

With these limitations in mind, I started researching some of the more popular open source Document Management Systems. Ideally, whatever product I choose should have some degree of integration with the wiki, and I'd like it to be web-based. Although the "One True Application" is a mythical beast, it's still a nice goal to deal with a single interface where possible.

I currently have my top 3 applications:

• SCAN (Smart Content Aggregation and Navigation)


• Alfresco


• KnowledgeTree

I've been toying with SCAN since yesterday and have to say that I'm super impressed! Although the interface isn't web-based, it has a minimalist and intuitive (yet powerful) look n' feel. The Tag Clustering plugin is killer, and the ability to import and search against my del.icio.us account is wonderful. If SCAN had a web-interface or remote service layer I'd be sold in a heart beat (who knows, I might end up making one).

I also have had a little experience with Alfresco. I evaluated this a little over a year ago, and had a temporary setup where I shared some docs with friends. I have no prior experience with Knowledge Tree, but it looks interesting.

I'll definitely share my findings as I dig in deeper.

Posted by EricB at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

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A few months ago I blogged about Personal Learning Environments and Knowledge Management. Since that time, I've been researching a number of open source applications and today, I've officially kicked-off my hunt for the perfect Wiki for personal knowledge management. What I'm ultimately looking for is a wiki for organizing my personal research, keeping track of journal entries, and consolidating all of my information into a single "trusted system". Ideally, this wiki will have some semantic capabilities so I can add metadata and structure to my content.

The choice of wiki software out there is pretty overwhelming. Sites like WikiMatrix do help quite a bit. And, thanks to Michael Berman's uber list of semantic web tools, I've been able to narrow down some wikis with semantic capabilities.

So far I've narrowed down my choice of Wikis to the following 3:

1. SocialText
2. DekiWiki
3. Semantic Mediawiki

Although SocialText and DekiWiki don't offer full semantic web capabilities, they do offer some basic forms of tagging. And, overall, both projects look really impressive. I'm probably going to lean towards MediaWiki, but want to get a feel for the other 2 since they appear to have quite a bit of polish and features that MediaWiki doesn't have out of the box (although, I suppose you can get comparable features by installing some extenstions). I'll probably spend a couple weeks evaluating each wiki, and will post my feedback.

Posted by EricB at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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For readers that know me, it's not a stretch to say that I *love* learning new things. I've always been a bit of a self learner (autodidactic if you want to get technical), and a few years ago I started a search (a quest actually) for finding tools to help streamline the learning process. Over time I discovered that the realm of knowledge management is vast and, quite honestly, fairly nebulous at times. In the next few months, I'm going to shift the focus of the blog for a little bit and write some more in depth posts on discoveries I've made with respect to personal knowledge management and highlight software that facilitates organization, collaboration, and learning.

Personal Knowledge Management

First of all, what exactly is "Personal Knowledge Management", or PKM? I think the following collection of quotes from the KnowledgeBoard (Technologies for Personal Knowledge Management) summarizes best:

"PKM involves a range of relatively simple and inexpensive techniques and tools that anyone can use to acquire, create and share knowledge, extend personal networks and collaborate with colleagues without having to rely on the technical or financial resources of the employer."

AND

"PKM is a conceptual framework to organize and integrate information that we, as individuals, feel is important so that it becomes part of our personal knowledge base. It provides a strategy for transforming what might be random pieces of information into something that can be systematically applied and that expands our personal knowledge."

In my personal experience, I've used a range of tools to help organize my information. These have included traditional PIMs (Personal Information Managers), outliners and note taking applications, and mind maps. I highlighted a number of these tools in my recent post on Mind Maps as Personal Dashboards. What I find intriguing is the potential to enhance PKM by leveraging newer technologies and applications(semantic and "web 2.0"). This recent breed of applications and technologies can help people discover, collect, aggregate, and share knowledge in new and interesting ways.

Personal Learning Environments

Organizing information and sharing knowledge is critical, but it helps to have a strategy and framework for approaching your learning endeavors. Personal Learning Environments, or PLEs, are defined as follows:

Personal Learning Environments are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to

* set their own learning goals
* manage their learning; managing both content and process
* communicate with others in the process of learning

and thereby achieve learning goals.

The following diagram is courtesy of Jeremy Hiebert:

Again, I think there is *huge* potential in this area. Advances in social networking and further development of the "Social Graph" will help accelerate learning and the development of communities geared towards specialized learning goals.

Posted by EricB at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

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This is truly a post that blends some of my major areas of interest: mind mapping, knowledge management, and the semantic web. Mind Raider is a unique and useful tool that brings a semantic twist to an outliner and knowledge management application. From the Mind Raider site:

MindRaider is Semantic Web outliner. It aims to connect the tradition of outline editors with emerging technologies. MindRaider mission is to organize not only the content of your hard drive but also your cognitive base and social relationships in a way that enables quick navigation, concise representation and inferencing.

I've known about Mind Raider for some time, and think it is one of the most promising outliners and knowledge tools out there. I was just browsing through some of my older KM and semantic web bookmarks, and discovered the author published a slideshow on Slideshare. I thought I'd share!

Posted by EricB at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Chuck Frey recently posted about an interesting application called WikiMindMap that represents Wikipedia entries in a mindmap format.

WikiMindMap is a tool to browse easily and efficiently in Wiki content, inspired by the mindmap technique. Wiki pages in large public wiki's, such as wikipedia, have become rich and complex documents. Thus, it is not allways straight forward to find the information you are really looking for. This tool aims to support users to get a good structured and easy understandable overview of the topic you are looking for.

Here's the result of a sample search for 'integral thought':

WikiMindMap reminds me of an application I reviewed a few months ago called Pathway (for Mac). The big difference, of course, is that WikiMindMap is entirely web-based. Very cool stuff!

Posted by EricB at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I discovered a fairly new site called listeningtowords that provides a collection of links to free online lectures and courses. Here's a sample of some of the more popular lectures:

The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole

Power & Responsibility: Science, Humanity and Religion in the 21st century

Linked: Networks from Biology to the World Wide Web

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I discovered a new blog yesterday that I plan on adding to my ever-growing collection of links for research, learning, and education. Self Made Scholar is a new blog devoted to self-education. What is self-education?

"Self-education is learning in its purest form. You decide what you want to learn, when you’re going to learn it, and how you’re going to master the subject. There are no formal teachers, no essays, no exams, no “group projects,” and no grades.

You can start at any age, whether you’re one or one-hundred. It’s one of the best ways to become an interesting person and sure beats spending your weekends in front of the TV."

Self Made Scholar maintains a directory of free online courses. Check it out.

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I discovered an interesting project today on del.icio.us. The Genealogy of Influence project is an effort to document and visualize the creative influences of great thinkers and artists. The is of great interest to me, since I've had a similar idea that's been on my "pet project" list for some time now.

Posted by EricB at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I've been using a great application for the last few months and I figured I would share my thoughts. Like most people, I use Wikipedia as a major source for research. One of the challenges I've always had though is getting caught up in "information serendipity". I tend to start reading one thing, and eventually discover many new interesting links, and ultimately forget what I was originally looking at.

The answer to my information attention defecit problem has been Pathway. Pathway is a Mac OS X application that is basically a visual/relational Wikipedia browser. The UI has 4 main components: