I stumbled across a VERY cool hack ‘How to Hack Toy EEGs‘. As much as I eventually want to tinker around with some soldering and Arduindo hacking, this was a little more in depth with time permitting.  The key takeaway from this article was a very impressive Processing-based visualizer to grab data from the custom serial interface and display in real-time.  With relatively little work I was able to fork the version of code and interface with the Mindwave using the official ThinkGear Socket Protocol.  I also generated builds for Windows, Linux, and Mac so anybody can download and install. You can check this out at https://github.com/ericblue/Processing-Brain-Grapher.

Here’s the README with some more in depth info:

[Overview]

After purchasing a Neurosky Mindwave EEG device, I was surprised to see limited apps for
viewing and visualizing EEG output (brainwave activity for delta, theta, alpha,
and beta waves). Upon discovering 'How to Hack Toy EEGs'
(http://frontiernerds.com/brain-hack), I was
inspired by the Processing visualization of the Arduino-based serial output.
I wanted to visualize the same set of data, however decided to obtain it using
Neurosky's published ThinkGear Socket Protocol
(http://developer.neurosky.com/docs/doku.php?id=thinkgear_connector_tgc).

This fork of kitschpatrol's original code differs in that it doesn't use the
Serial interface to obtain brainwave data.  Rather, it communicates via the ThinkGear
connector using the ThinkGear Socket Protocol and requests data in JSON format.

[MindWave/MindSet Communication]

By default the ThinkGear Connector allows applications to connect over TCP
(default 127.0.0.1:13854) and request data in either binary or JSON format.
This application will connect to the ThinkGear socket,
and read the streaming real-time data.  Format:

	{
	"eSense":
		{"attention":91,"meditation":41},
	 "eegPower":
	 	{"delta":1105014,"theta":211310,
	 	"lowAlpha":7730,"highAlpha":68568,
	 	"lowBeta":12949,"highBeta":47455,
	 	"lowGamma":55770,"highGamma":28247},
	 "poorSignalLevel":0
	 }

The default IP and port will be used, unless alternatives are specified as
environment variables (THINKGEAR_HOST and THINKGEAR_PORT).  Port forwarding can
be used on the host Windows or Mac computer to allow remote servers to connect.
To allow other hosts to connect and run Processing, run ReplayTCP
(http://www.dlcsistemas.com/html/relay_tcp.html) OR, use netcat (windows or mac)
to port forward (clients can now connect to port 13855).
Ex:  nc -l -p 13855 -c ' nc localhost 13854'

[Required Libaries]

The following required libraries are included:

- ControlP5
- JSON (See http://www.blprnt.com/processing/json.zip)

[Binaries]

Binaries were creating using Processing's app builder
(platforms = windows, mac & linux)

[Todo]
- Re-visit previous todo from original code
- Add ability to record data (CSV, etc.)

And, the original paper on Scribd:

Most traditional personal knowledge management (PKM) or personal information management (PIM) applications offer the same basic set of features:

* Storage of notes and documents
* Search functionality and keyword/tagging capability
* Outline view in a traditional hierarchy, or user-defined views
* Task management, calendar, and contact management (mainly PIM, not KM)

These are essential features, however don’t offer too much to the more visually-inclined knowledge junkies. For visual learners and information visualization fans, having a graphical representation of knowledge and seeing how things relate is a must have feature.  Luckily, in the past few years there has been a rise in the number of knowledge management applications that offer this capability.  The following is a list of interesting /unique / effective tools for knowledge management and information visualization (not listed in any particular order):

15. DeepaMehta

Link: http://www.deepamehta.de/
Platforms: Win, Mac, Linux
Cost: Free (Open Source)

DeepaMehta is a “networked semantic desktop” that replaces the traditional computer desktop. DeepaMehta rids the user from dealing with applications, files and directories. Instead, the DeepaMehta user arranges information of any kind and origin into supportive topic maps. Topics may be e.g. projects, emails, webpages, notes, articles, contacts, or meetings. Users define their own topic types. Old-fashioned applications, windows and files are no longer in the sight of the user, but the meaningful relationships between real world topics.

14. Tinderbox

Link: http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/
Platforms: Mac
Cost: $179

Tinderbox stores and organizes your notes, plans, and ideas. It can help you analyze and understand them. And Tinderbox helps you share ideas through Web journals and web logs. Tinderbox maps your notes as you make them. Build relationships by arranging notes, organizing them with shape and color, linking them. Tinderbox lets you record ideas quickly and keep them where you’ll find them again when you need them.

13. Vue

Link: http://vue.tufts.edu/
Platforms: Win, Mac, Linux
Cost: Free (Open Source)

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.

12. eyePlorer

Link: http://www.eyeplorer.com/eyePlorer/
Platforms: Web
Cost: Free

EyePlorer allows you to explore and process knowledge. Search engines help you find links and documents – they require you to follow these links and open the respective document in order to access information. eyePlorer.com, powered by vionto, provides immediate access to facts. It visualizes facts as well as relationships between facts. Furthermore, eyePlorer.com allows you to collect, process and publish interesting bits of information. eyePlorer.com is a visual knowledge workbench.

11. BeeDocs Timeline

Link: http://www.beedocs.com
Platforms: Mac
Cost: $65

Bee Docs Timeline is software for Mac OS X that makes it easy for you to present historical events in a way that reveals connections and clarifies relationships.

Make timeline charts of world history, family trees, fictional events or business deadlines. Timelines can help you understand and present history with new perspective!

See: http://eric-blue.com/2009/04/14/how-to-create-stunning-3d-timelines/

Post continued, click below to navigate to the next page….

Two key things from this paper really stood out to me:

1. The distinction between the role of objective and subjective realms when it comes to PKM. For example:
   

   “… the objective realm – the set of electronic documents and other information that are
   available to a group at large. This is often the entire public domain, as with the World
   Wide Web, but sometimes it may be communicated only internally with an organization.
   The key factor is that it consists of materials everyone within a large group has access to,
   and views identically (ie., a given text appears the same to everyone.)
   a subjective realm – the viewpoints, interpretations, classifications, and relationships
   that an individual perceives when examining the objective realm. This set of elements is
   unique to each observer. It represents the ongoing accumulation of knowledge each
   person builds as they browse and learn from objective sources. It need not consist solely
   of elements from the objective realm, as the observer will also bring in their own
   background knowledge and biases, but it is most often primarily comprised of such
   objective elements.”

2. The depth and range of coverage of the existing PKM solutions (mindmaps, outliners, wikis, semantic web technologies, and numerous references to historical PKM products)

If you’re interested in Personal Knowledge Management, I would *highly* recommend checking out this paper. My curiosity about the Memex has been peeked recently, and this paper definitely re-enforces the notion that others are interested in also achieving this vision.

I was able to find this pretty easily (by luck) via Google, however there is a limited distribution notice in the paper itself. So, i’m not certain if I can or should provide a direct link. However, you can check out the link to the ACM Portal (ACM subscription required). It seems the link on ACM is referencing a new paper published in 2006, which I have not yet reviewed:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1142431

And, of course, you can simply Google the paper title in quotes and you should be able to find the .pdf pretty easily:

Google “Building the Memex Sixty Years Later: Trends and Directions in Personal Knowledge Bases”

“Thinkbase is a new way to navigate and explore information on the web. It is what we call a ‘Visual Wiki’. It is based on Freebase, an open, shared database of the world’s knowledge – in other words a Semantic Wiki. Thinkbase uses a visualization tool (Thinkmap) to create an interactive visual representation of the semantic relationships in Freebase.”

This is actually something I’ve been wanting to do with my own Personal Knowledge Manager(a.k.a. Semantic Wiki or Memex). I’m a huge fan of visualization, and ThinkMap (The software used to power ThinkBase) is a pretty comprehensive toolkit. I’ve looked at quite a few different visualization solutions over the last few years, and ThinkBase is one of the most impressive ones. Recently I came across a stunning Flash-based project by Ruben Swieringa
called the interactive mindmap (http://www.rubenswieringa.com/blog/interactive-mindmap). It would be interesting to leverage some sort of open source solution like this to accomplish what the guys at ThinkBase have done. Overall, ThinkBase is a step in the right direction and I’m hoping it gets some well-deserved attention.

What is JIT?

The JIT is an advanced JavaScript infovis toolkit based on 5 papers about different information visualization techniques.
The JIT implements advanced features of information visualization like Treemaps (with the slice and dice and squarified methods), an adapted visualization of trees based on the Spacetree, a focus+context technique to plot Hyperbolic Trees, and a radial layout of trees with advanced animations (RGraph).

Read more at http://blog.thejit.org/javascript-information-visualization-toolkit-jit/

“Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data.”

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_best_tools_for_visualization.php

Related Post:
http://eric-blue.com/blog/2006/10/dataesthetics_the_power_and_be.html

“Our attention is stretched so thin these days that there are times when I have actually tried to register for what I thought was a new service only to realize later that I already had an account — it just got lost in the shuffle. With so many new web sites and services vying for our attention it is easy to feel the effects of social media fatigue. Andrew Shuttleworth, a social media junky living in Japan, thought it might be helpful to try to map his social media usage. The result is a staggering view of how information we put on the web flows.”

You can check out Andrew’s original post here:
http://hq.andrewshuttleworth.com/hq/2008/02/social-media-on.html

And, here’s a quick summary from NotCot:

“The Discover interface of Burst Labs is mesmerizingly brilliant ~ and there’s a melody for every mood you could possibly feel or imagine, and truly one of the most refreshing flashy user experiences i’ve encountered recently. Burst Labs is the latest brainchild of The Burst Collective: which Compose + Produces Music, Licenses Music, Records Music, and now gives you an incredible multi sensory experience to browse this ambient digital music space. Odds are you’ve already heard their music and didn’t even realize it… ”

I compiled a list of compelling music visualization resources last November. I’ll be sure to include the Burst interface in my next major update.

1) Allows you to store your Speedlinks with del.icio.us using a common tag like ’speedlink’.

2) Fetches Speedlinks using the Del.icio.us API on a daily basis (tag=’speedlink’, date=’YYYY-MM-DD)

3) Parses the XML output using XPath, creates an HTML summary of the speedlinks, and automatically posts a blog entry.

For those of you that haven’t yet heard about Yahoo Pipes (from their website):

Pipes is an interactive data aggregator and manipulator that lets you mashup your favorite online data sources.
Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs:
* combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate to create your ultimate custom feed.
* geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
* remix your favorite data sources and use the Pipe to power a new application.
* build custom vertical search pages that are impossible with ordinary search engines.
* power badges on your web site.
* extend your web site by accessing the JSON or RSS output from Pipes.

Pipes uses a slick visual editor that allows you to fetch and manipulate data sources (JSON and RSS), add user-defined inputs (dates, strings, numbers, urls), and filter the content as you wish (foreach w/ regex, sorting, content analysis, etc).

My first task in fetching my links from del.icio.us was figuring the best way to query. There were some small challenges:

1) The del.icio.us API requires basic authentication, and outputs in XML.
2) Even if I could parse the XML with pipes, you can query posts by date, but it is in UTC format (conversion is simple, but I don’t want to bother). And, there is no way to supply a date range (other than 24 hours from the date you provided).
3) The del.icio.us RSS feed (http://del.icio.us/rss/ericblue76/speedlink) doesn’t allow you to specifiy a date range.

Out of these limitations, my first Pipe was created – RSS Filter By Date. As you can see below, I defined 3 inputes (the RSS url, start date, and end date). Pipes has a nifty date format, so you can supply in a variety of syntaxes: simple english (today, yesterday), multiple formats (DD/MM/YY, YYYY-MM-DD), and also includes timezone (PST, PDT, UTC). The feed is fetched, and the date inputs are normalized to utime (which is UNIX epoch seconds), and each feed entry is parsed to see if the post is within the specified range.

The following screenshot illustrates what the pipe looks like after you run it. You can choose to download the query results in RSS or JSON format:

Now that the ‘RSS Filter By Date’ pipe was created, I proceeded to create a new pipe ‘Del.icio.us Speedlink Filter‘ that accepts your del.icio.us username, speedlink tag, and date range (default is UTC today, but can be converted to any date range) and linked to the RSS filter pipe.

Unfortunately, one major limitation I found with Pipe’s RSS output is that it strips a good bit of the original metadata associated with the original feed. This is discussed in the following post. Although you do get the original link, name, and description, the tag info is lost. If you want to include tag info in the speedlink results, you’ll have to download as JSON and parse/format to HTML.

Although using Yahoo Pipes to parse and fetch my del.icio.us links definitely works and is nifty, it doesn’t really simplify the original approach. But, this experiment was certainly fun, and it definitely shows the potential of Pipes to allow users to easily create, and manipulate data with little to no programming required.