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ChessTweets.com – The Community Chess Experiment

June 17, 2009

The ChessTweets experiment is an interesting research that was created and developed in order to produce the world’s first automated and objective hive-mind machine. How? Simple: The idea is to allow tweeters that play chess to contribute with their ideas and plays in a peculiar and innovative way.

Twitter gives users the chance to make their voices to be heard and their skills to be appreciated, and this site seems to be a clear example of that.The development of this application was possible due to the fact that Twitter triggers a lively input of information that is being used to create a smart Twitter chess application.

Will this machine learn to compete with the best of the best? The ChessTweets Experiment is being conducted to realize if it would be possible to create a machine that could actually LEARN to compete with the best players in the world. This is not just about data storage and processing but learning. This sounds cool, doesn’t it?

This application asks its participants to provide their input in community games to examine their relative skills in order to evaluate the way every mind plays.

This application will be interesting to learn about how well a machine can learn to play a game, as well as to realize if there is any possible artificial creative thinking under based on Twitters input.

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Jetpack.MozillaLabs.com – Extend & Personalize The Web

June 9, 2009

We can describe Jetpack as a new experiment that aims to employ open web technologies to enhance the browser, and both extend and personalize the web as a whole. Since it is presented by Mozilla Labs, you are not going to ask which browser is supported, are you?

How is this project implemented? Through an API which empowers anybody to come up with Firefox add-ons that take the web technologies we all know and love (or hate) as the starting point.

As it was mentioned in the fist paragraph, Jetpack is an open source project. Any person can get his hand on it, and be an active part of its development and testing.

The objective of this new initiative, then, is creating a new framework through which people will be able to work together, communicate with each other and even play and discover new things. Mozilla hopes to come up with a robust web-based platform that is equally extensible and secure. Pay the site a visit and see how the project is headed, and whether or not there is a space you can fill in somewhere in its design and development.

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Zpub.net – Palimpsests, Paratexts And A Directory

July 8, 2008

Z publishing is a San Francisco-based publishing company that has dealt extensively with the city it lives and works in, and lots of salient figures of its past and present fauna. This site is not quite the corporate headquarters of Z, nor should you expect to find anything along those lines, but rather odds and bits that have been worked and reworked to become books, manuscripts, research notes, links to stories, histories, opinion columns, pictures, projects, etc.

that have (or may have) been of use to come up with biographies and histories of the city that have known the light in book format, though unfortunately you can’t buy the books from the site. The site is as eclectic as one would be inclined to infer based on the topography where it’s born: a gallery of local currency here, sign a petition to fix the public transportation system there, a biography of some 19th century crazy person, and the list goes on. If you are a devout dweller of that area of California, or just interested in what happened there you’ll love it, though it is quite clear that you might be hypnotized by this site if you happen to be remotely interested in literary theory; indeed, scholars have been bitterly complaining about how since the inception of computers we have lost track of how a text comes to life, of how the first drafts are lost forever, about how we cannot know where an author edits his own materials and puts some of his sources aside before writing the final version of the text. Thanks to Zpub.net, a bit of that has been recovered, since we can take a look at the same things the writer of the book is when sitting in her desk. Hopefully we can look forward to have this trend catch up with most publishers, or at least with the most independent ones.

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Dangerouslaboratories.org – Do It Yourself

June 6, 2008

Have you ever hear the expression “don’t try this at home”? Well, people in this website don’t. In fact, they aren’t even interested in hearing it.

Dangerouslaboratories.org is a multi-dollar firm located in the Rocky Mountains, and its particularity is that it specializes in do-it-yourself scientific, industrial, and alternative energy projects. This means that if there is any dangerous, explosive, inflammable, or corrosive idea rounding up your head, they will help you to become a reality. Enter the homepage and you will see words such as uranium, bio-diesel, distillation, and radiation, all of them scientific concepts that have an inherent danger within. Each one of those concepts have its own section, and by entering it you will find expressive pictures and information that will show you how these people work. Think of it as an illustrated instruction manual that teaches how to do any dangerous activity without any destructive effects. At least it’s what they say.

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Scijournals.com – Search For Journals

May 9, 2008

If you were looking for a site to search for journals, this is the site for you. They have a large array of journals available right there.

On the left side of the page you will see a navigator bar, containing different journals categories. For example: nanotechnology, psychology journal, nanomedic journal, and nanotech among others. If you need journal articles, you can find them there; visit their site, go to the research journals section, and you’ll see many links related to the matter. In addition, there are scientific researches, like mechanical engineering, for instance. And, if you require some science lessons, there are lesson plans, as well as scientific courses, available on the site. Moreover, there are related links that will help you find more information on the topic you’re interested. If you want to learn more about sciences in general, there are science facts, science experiments, and science articles, among other.

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Comedyxp.tv – The Comedy Experiment

May 6, 2008

Do you get bored easily in your free time? Are you tired of watching always the same TV shows? Comedyxp.tv is the website that will bring all the fun and excitement back to your life! Why? Because they have created in this site this original and funny game, called improvisation.

They create characters and scenes on-the-spot, in front of a live audience. In the other hand, comedyXPeriment willfully plays with the traditional formats of improvisation; short form and long form. And this is how it works; long form takes one initial suggestion from the audience and creates a complete story around this single suggestion. This represents CXP’S signature formats. Short form is the most well known , which become popular by the show “ who’s line is it anyway?” again each scene begins with a new suggestion from the audience and it has a duration of 3 to 5 minutes. You have to try it! It is really funny! Visit the website to learn more about the players, the show schedule and more.

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Amazing1.com – Buy Amazing New Products

April 30, 2008

This website, belonging to Information Unlimited, provides a wide selection of technological items developed by experimenters and technology enthusiasts. On the site items ranging from listening devices, toys, free energy, hypnosis, lasers, night vision, and much more can be purchased.

Each of the featured categories is made up of a large variety of products that can only be found through Information Unlimited, as the patents to these items belong to them. Each of the products comes with a complete description of its function, item name, dimensions, photograph so buyers can see exactly what the product looks like, and of course price. The purchase can be made online, by fax, or phone. The website very clearly specifies that some of its products may not be legal in all states or countries abroad, so buyers should be aware of the laws and regulations that apply to them before going ahead with their purchases.

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Twitsori.com – A Mesmerizing Twitter Experiment

April 30, 2008

Twitsori is a social experiment based on Twitter. It’s got a minimalistic thing going with a black screen and bold headlines to the left side which read love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish.

This provocative line up of headlines is indeed just what the experiment is all about. We all know that Twitter is the outlet for expressing the most trivial desires, many of which have to do with the previous headings. Thus Twitsori pulls in public tweets which have to do with love, hate, etc. The tweets are then published as a never ending river of thoughts. The concept is based on We Feel Fine a site which does the same for the blogosphere. The design is spectacular and only frames the curious and luring attributes of each Twitter post. You could be sucked in very easily.

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Zpub.com – Palimpsests, Paratexts And A Directory

April 27, 2008

Z publishing is a San Francisco-based publishing company that has dealt extensively with the city it lives and works in, and lots of salient figures of its past and present fauna. This site is not quite the corporate headquarters of Z, nor should you expect to find anything along those lines, but rather odds and bits that have been worked and reworked to become books, manuscripts, research notes, links to stories, histories, opinion columns, pictures, projects, etc.

that have (or may have) been of use to come up with biographies and histories of the city that have known the light in book format, though unfortunately you can’t buy the books from the site. The site is as eclectic as one would be inclined to infer based on the topography where it’s born: a gallery of local currency here, sign a petition to fix the public transportation system there, a biography of some 19th century crazy person, and the list goes on. If you are a devout dweller of that area of California, or just interested in what happened there you’ll love it, though it is quite clear that you might be hypnotized by this site if you happen to be remotely interested in literary theory; indeed, scholars have been bitterly complaining about how since the inception of computers we have lost track of how a text comes to life, of how the first drafts are lost forever, about how we cannot know where an author edits his own materials and puts some of his sources aside before writing the final version of the text. Thanks to Zpub.com, a bit of that has been recovered, since we can take a look at the same things the writer of the book is when sitting in her desk. Hopefully we can look forward to have this trend catch up with most publishers, or at least with the most independent ones.

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Bitsong.com – Experimental Music and Colors

April 13, 2008

Bitsong.com is my idea of zen garden site, those little sandboxes with pebbles that one is supposed to move around to generate a very peaceful and relaxing effect.

This site does not involve pebbles or rakes, but simple interactive animations some with sound and other without. For instance, the homepage of the site features a very peaceful-looking room with a vase where you can put flowers which you take out of a nearby garden, trim them, change their color, assemble them in an arrangement, etc. This experiment belongs to the ‘Stories’ area, where you have different sequences, like one in which by hovering your mouse over a peephole into a forest, you can see what it looks like at different times of the day, and listen to the birds singing, and the brush moving in the breeze. There are also a couple of fun stuff animations which work as harps, as in you move your mouse over an image of a flower or a string of colored balls, and it plays different notes. For graphic designers and artists, probably the most relevant bit of the site is the one to be found under the ‘Color Cube’ tag, where users will find an animation of a color prism cut at different diagonals, and is supposed to allow you to see families or color and shades not as isolated patches but as torrents of color. As is the case with the zen gardens, you can’t really do anything with the site other than sit back and enjoy it.

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Fameexperiment.com – Achieving Fame Online

April 1, 2008

Given the popularity of reality television and the subsequent fame of their stars, who’s to say that fame can’t be reached by even more “ordinary” citizens? The Fame Experiment wants to see if someone can become famous via the internet, simply by gaining enough exposure. The website will carry out their test in two stages.

First, interested parties will publicize The Fame Experiment on their own blogs and profile pages. In exchange, they will get “fame points” that will make them eligible to be the individual randomly selected to become famous. Second, after a candidate is selected, these same sites will publicize that individual and link back to a blog and profile.

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Funology.com – The Science Of Having Fun

March 25, 2008

Funology.com is a portal for younger science enthusiasts, where they can learn how to have fun and make amusing tricks just by putting the basic laws of physics and chemistry to work.

The site is designed in flashy colors and has some characters to make it more attractive to younger audiences, though the overabundance of banners make it a bit hard to concentrate on the subject matter. In any case, the site’s content is very interesting, as it hosts activities for kids of all ages, cultural backgrounds and gender: one can find stuff for young magicians, cooks and stand up comedians, including lo-tech science experiments, riddles, trivia and jokes. The information presented on the site has been put together by the webmaster, and when the project or activity was taken from a book or website, the source is acknowledged, and thus the site is a very valuable resource for teachers and parents to go on reading about fun stuff to teach to their children. User submissions are also welcome.

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CockEyed.com – Much Better than College Humor

March 18, 2008

If you have some time to spare online, don’t miss CockEyed.com, a humor site where you’ll find a nice assortment of strange and curious facts which will make you laugh.

The main source of this site’s jokes are the kind of strange projects and doubts one has dreamed of at some point in one’s life. For instance: have you ever wondered whether it is worse to reverse your vacuum cleaner, or to walk into a lamp post while admiring yourself in a shop window? A good way to get the answer to this and other mind-boggling questions is to take a look at the dollor-meter (as in pain-meter) this site provides. Other interesting projects have to do with measuring how much of something is in the container: how big is the Sunday edition of your local paper if you spread it? How long does it take to empty a shaving cream can, and how much space does it take up? If you are interested in urban interventions and the like, you’ll find some neat examples of people messing with Mc Donald’s menus, public seating space and similar pranks.

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Graphwise.com – Charting a World of Data

October 13, 2007

Whether you are a student or a scientist, graphwise.com will come in handy.

Graphwise.com is a search engine for all “table data” that is found on the Internet and then shows the data in graphic form. Searching is simple and provides a wide variety of results and options to help narrow the search. Once the ideal graph is found it appears with the original source URL and can be used in presentations and further research endeavors. The data available has no boundaries, meaning that is if the data is anywhere on the web, you can have access to it. Not only that but someone else will do the dirty work of putting into graphic form. Original graphs are also part of Graphwise.com and are accompanied by extensive information describing the methods and meanings of the results. Even if you don’t have specific data in mind but you are a fan of graphs you can check out the most popular graphs and tags of the day. Today’s popular graphs include: Iraq Coalition Casualties, Donovan McNabb: QB or RB, Campaign Contributions and They released who? If you are interested in anything from baseball and beer to politics and calculators, check out Graphwise.com and put some concrete data behind your beliefs.

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Videotag.co.uk – Game to Experiment with Tagging

August 2, 2007

Do you like games enough to play for a research experiment? Videotag is a game involving YouTube videos that aims to find better ways of categorizing videos for the visually impaired. They also just want to know why users tag, what users tag, and what type of tags users enter (which of course also greatly serves marketers).

It is a single player game where you tag YouTube videos for points. They show you clips and you simply enter in as many descriptive tag words as you think of. The more original the tag, the more points you get. If you can’t think of any, they offer suggestions, but then you get less points. As you gain more points, you can power up to higher levels. The show comedy clips to help make this game more interesting for the user, as it really is just a marketing game.

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