(2006-09-05) Hyperscope Released

Eugene Eric Kim announces the v1 release of HyperScope. Code by Brad Neuberg.

Richard Mac Manus has more details. Brad told me to "keep in mind that this is a faithful reproduction of the earlier systems, with the original commands, so it takes a bit of training to use." He also said that one of Douglas Engelbart's goals is "to create software that makes experts more powerful", which means there is a learning curve. But once you do learn it, you have expanded capabilities. According to Brad, Doug calls this "software for adults." Eeek.

• Dan Saffer questions the Expert Friendly thinking. Recreating the idea as conceived decades ago would be like making a really cool VCR right now - it's great that you can do it, but don't expect many people to use it.

  • Les Orchard responds but I'm not clear on whether he's sticking with a conclusion. I Commented there on various bits relating to Crossing The Chasm and Context (IBIS vs Compendium).

  • Harold Hotelling made the interesting comment that Open Formats allow people to use completely different tools with different levels of expertise needed. On the other hand, does this cap the capabilities of what the expert user can do? It certainly limits what he can show/share with the non-expert user (you can't pass a HyperScope link to someone running a browser that doesn't support JavaScript).

The WikiSym keynote that Eugene Eric Kim and Douglas Engelbart gave is available as Video online.

• Jan'2007: in the video, Eugene demonstrated using HyperScope to view a page of the Purple Wiki, based on adding some code to the wiki to be able to render a page as OPML (Wiki And Outlining). But the Purple Wiki site doesn't seem to have that turned on.

  • HyperScope:FrontPage has such a View link, but when it loaded the view, I just had an empty page body (FireFox v1.4, MacOs X).

    • upgraded FireFox, having a little more success now. But only a little. (Same issue at work on WinXP/FireFox.) Maybe I need to study the controls a little more...