View a demo of how to use tags to navigate in a single essay and across the mesh (opens in a new window).
Dec 21st, 2011 — Left: the Rosetta Stone. Right: a dancer from the First Nation Kehewin Native Dance Theater.This talk focuses on "unofficial" uses of new media, especially by the young, and why they are sometimes more effective than <continued>
Nov 11th, 2011 — Telling stories simultaneously in multiple media is like creating a new "geography of the tale", and it requires the author and the audience to find new, interactive spaces for sharing in publishing projects for cinema, <continued>
Nov 11th, 2011 — Who am I? How do I live a good life? What is reality? Such perennial questions may seem remote from the pleasures of playing videogames for entertainment and fantasy. Yet gamers too, in the midst of having fun, are <continued> 
Sep 19th, 2011 — Proposed as Chapter 7 in:Oliver Scheiding (University of Mainz) and Jan Stievermann (Heidelberg University), eds., A "Peculiar Mixture":German-Speaking People in the Greater Mid-Atlantic Region from 1709 to the <continued>
Aug 12th, 2011 — In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others <continued>
Jul 6th, 2011 — Following on Well Played 1.0 and 2.0, this book is full of in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. Contributors analyze sequences in a <continued>
Jun 27th, 2011 — This text is an introduction to the future of mass media and mass communications "" cross-media communications. Cross-media is explained through the presentation and analysis of contemporary examples and project-based <continued>
Jun 18th, 2011 — The Third Edition Variable Media Questionnaire (VMQ3) is an information system based on a seemingly paradoxical goal: it seeks to preserve art-works by describing how they can be changed. Implicit in this goal is the <continued> 
Jun 4th, 2011 — Ricardo Mbarkho comments on how globalization and new media have fostered change and creative pursuits in Lebanon from 2008-2011. 
May 18th, 2011 — It has been a profound few weeks in the Arab world to witness, especially as an Egyptian-American. A couple of us (namely myself and code developer Christopher Morton) have been working relentlessly to get <continued> ThoughtMesh is an unusual model for publishing and discovering scholarly papers online. It gives readers a tag-based navigation system that uses keywords to connect excerpts of essays published on different Web sites.
Add your essay to the mesh, and ThoughtMesh gives you a traditional navigation menu plus a tag cloud that enables nonlinear access to text excerpts. You can navigate across excerpts both within the original essay and from related essays distributed across the mesh. More...
So let's say you are reading an essay on Modern art. You can pick a single word out of that essay's tag cloud- -say Picasso- -and view a list of all the sections from that essay that relate to Picasso. Or you can view a list of sections of other articles tagged with Picasso, and jump right to one of those sections. You can also combine tags to narrow your search, such as Picasso + Cubism + 1900.
As an author, you can choose to post your essay in a central repository hosted by the Vectors program at USC, the sponsor of this project. Or you can self-archive your essay on your own Web site. (That's the "distributed publication" part.)
Firefox 2+ on Linux, OSX, or Windows
Safari should function correctly.
Internet Explorer 7+ users will be able to use most of the features.
Your essay should be divided into sections of (optimally) 2-5 paragraphs apiece, with headings.
Subsections and subheadings are fine--ThoughtMesh's navigation menu can accommodate up to two levels of headings. You can have a top-level heading without text, and you can have one without any subsections.
This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section.
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This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section. This is the text for the first section.
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This is the text for the third section. This is the text for the third section. This is the text for the third section. This is the text for the third section.
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You can also type an essay directly into ThoughtMesh, but this is not recommended unless you are an ace writer or just editing.
ThoughtMesh offers limited support for hyperlinks, italics, and other HTML markup.
ThoughtMesh supports essay illustrations in Firefox and Safari; we are working to include support for Internet Explorer in a future release.
We are still working out the maximum size for a ThoughtMesh essay--for now, try whatever you want.
It's a good idea to aim for 3-8 tags per excerpt--ThoughtMesh will tell you when you have too many.
Check the Frequently Asked Questions for answers to common questions, including:
You can also watch these screencasts if you prefer step-by-step video instructions:
Conceptual architect, client-side designer, and client-side engineer.
Designer and server-side engineer.
Engineer of remote scripting (Telamon.js) and commenting (Re:Poste) software.
ThoughtMesh uses Mehta's Tagline software.
ThoughtMesh was developed with support from USC's Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular and is featured in the Difference Issue (Fall 2007).
To learn more or get help using ThoughtMesh, contact us at ude.eniam.timu@erutluc.loop.
