Blaster
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ASSOZIATIONS-BLASTER Mk II
The Assoziations-Blaster is an interactive text network with the following features:
- automatic, non-linear real-time-linking of text inputs
- multiple interfaces: direct user input, input via mail, data on any other webpages, connection to search engines
- individual ranking system for all entries
The Blaster is mainly a database with text entries that are connected to a keyword. Anyone is allowed to enter new text or keywords into this pool.
You cannot browse through the database, but just jump from one text to another, depending on the keywords a text contains. For example, when there is a text about sickness mentioning »fever«, a link is generated to another text in the pool of the keyword »fever«. This text mentioning the »sore throat« that comes with fever, the text about sore throat leads to getting it by »drinking« to much what again leads to »beer« ... and so on. Every word that is also a keyword generates a link to a random text that is saved under this keyword. As the links are generated in real time, they are always up to date with freshly entered texts or keywords.
Users are also allowed to rate texts and set a personal threshold, so they only see texts that have a certain rating – if they chose to do so.
The Web-Blaster allows to load any web page and generate Blaster Links in it. This was made to establish connections to web pages with normal hierarchy.
Because search engines can only crawl linear site structures, the Blaster has a special interface that brings the texts and keywords to their indexes.
All of the described effects are made transparent on a detailed statistics page. Users that contribute to the Blaster's database can watch how their writing work effects the traffic from search engines, the rating, the most popular keywords and so on. So the users are in full control of the site's content and development. Like a traditional webmaster, they can add texts, modify existing texts by generating new link-keywords, they can rate texts and move them out of view and finally watch how this changes the whole project. And they do not do it alone, but form a collaborative web of information with the other users.
The Assoziations-Blaster is a way of organizing text information differently from hierarchical structures. Every text entry is on the same hierarchical level, not dependent on input time, thread-chains or any other criterion. The automatic links can change the meaning of the single texts, and the links themselves change over time as new data is put into the Blaster's database.
The Blaster can be used a system to produce literature, as a knowledge-database, as a game or as a scientific tool to eruate how things are connected together.
Assoziations-Blaster Mk II is an improved Version of Assoziations-Blaster. New features are: rating system, improved Statistics, support for multiple languages, mail interface, improved search engine interface, web-blaster
On 20th of March 2000, the German database contains 31027 texts under 2852 keywords. Every day 150 to 200 new texts are entered.