press release : Hyperwords Version 4
LONDON, UK—July 18, 2005—When every word comes alive.
The World Wide Web is the fastest growing repository of information the world has ever seen. From inception in 1991 the web has grown to features six billion pages - growth that shows no signs of slowing down.
The software we use to access the information on the Web has not changed much however. It still presents the web as pages of nicely-formated text with images, connected through hand-made hyperlinks. The only way we can navigate the vast amount of information on the Web is to follow these hand-made hyperlinks or by typing keywords into search engines, which frequently return results by the thousandfold.
This is why a team of researchers have come together to make every single word interactive, to turn all words into 'hyperwords'.
The team includes the inventor of the computer mouse (and word processing, and email and movable windows and so on), one of the co-authors of TCP/IP (the technical foundation of the Internet), the author of the original Finder (the Macintosh's first 'desktop') and the man who coined the term 'hypertext' to begin with: Doug Engelbart, Vint Cerf, Bruce Horn and Ted Nelson.
Working with Research Director Frode Hegland at UCLIC (University College London Interaction Center), they have at a stroke changed the (potential) behavior of every word on every web page in every web browser.
The way it works is simple; users point to a word (or a selection of words) and a menu appears (no key-presses are required). This menu features a series of options to change the view of the information on the page, to refer to other information, to copy information to the users computer, to blog about the information and so on.
If for example, the user chooses the 'Refer to other information...' menu item, a submenu appears offering options to 'search...' Google, Yahoo and so on. Instead of searching, the user can choose to 'look up...' the information up in dictionaries and other online reference works including Wikipedia.
The hyperwords system is very easy to use, even for novices, offering a very wide range or commands at a single click.
Research Director Frode Hegland says: "The benefit of surfing the web with hyperwords is the greatly enhanced freedom of movement for the the surfer - it is akin to graduating from taking the bus (simple, but pre-decided destinations) to driving a car (a little more complicated, but vastly increased freedom of choosing when and where to go). Except hyperwords don't even introduce extra complications. A single point and click and the surfer chooses where to go: Google? Dictionary? Wikipedia? Glossary definitions? Sit back, crack your knuckles, you can stretch much further now."
The system works as a web-based intermediary, with no download or plug-in required. For more technical information, please visit the website: http://www.liquidinformation.org
Version 4.0 announced today, features keyboard navigation for more advanced users. This intuitive keyboard command language mimics the menu layout, allowing users to learn over time that, for example, searching Yahoo can also be done by pointing to text and entering 'RSY', which corresponds to 'Refer to other information...', 'search...' and 'Yahoo'. Using this logic, searching Google is as simple as 'RSG' and looking something up in a dictionary becomes as quick as 'RLD'. But this may all seem a little abstract until you try it yourself.
There is a LIVE DEMO available on http://www.liquidinformation.org The site also features screenshots, logo artwork as well as press and industry quotes.
The Liquid Information Research Group is currently in negotiations with a major US computer company and a major British institution to take the Hyperwords Project forward to a broader audience. We are actively looking for appropriate institutions to join the Hyperwords Alliance. http://www.hyperwords.com/alliance
Please contact, Frode Hegland, at frode@liquidinformation.org if you have any questions or comments.