The 5th European Semantic Web Conference was held in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, in June 1-5, 2008. A 900 page book (“The Semantic Web: Research and Applications”) was issued which contains the papers from the technical program of the conference.

The 51 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited talks and 25 system description papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 270 submitted papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on agents, application ontologies, applications, formal languages, foundational issues, learning, ontologies and natural language, ontology alignment, query processing, search, semantic Web services, storage and retrieval of semantic Web data, as well as user interfaces and personalization.

I think the table of contents below shows the huge array of topics covered in this book:

Invited Talks

• From Capturing Semantics to Semantic Search: A Virtuous Cycle
• Garlik: Semantic Technology for the Consumer

Agents

• Semantic Web Technology for Agent Communication Protocols
• xOperator – Interconnecting the Semantic Web and Instant Messaging Networks

Application Ontologies

• An Ontology for Software Models and Its Practical Implications for Semantic Web Reasoning
• A Core Ontology for Business Process Analysis

Applications

• Assisting Pictogram Selection with Semantic Interpretation
• KonneXSALT: First Steps Towards a Semantic Claim Federation Infrastructure
• Building a National Semantic Web Ontology and Ontology Service Infrastructure – The FinnONTO Approach
• Creating and Using Geospatial Ontology Time Series in a Semantic Cultural Heritage Portal
• Semantic Email as a Communication Medium for the Social Semantic Desktop
• IVEA: An Information Visualization Tool for Personalized Exploratory Document Collection Analysis
• Building a Semantic Web Image Repository for Biological Research Images

Formal Languages

• Mapping Validation by Probabilistic Reasoning
• Safe and Economic Re-Use of Ontologies: A Logic-Based Methodology and Tool Support
• dRDF: Entailment for Domain-Restricted RDF
• Finite Model Reasoning in DL-Lite
• ModuleExtractionand Incremental Classification: A Pragmatic Approach for EL+Ontologies
• Forgetting Concepts in DL-Lite

Foundational Issues

• An Entity Name System (ENS) for the Semantic Web
• A Functional Semantic Web Architecture

Learning

• Query Answering and Ontology Population: An Inductive Approach
• Instance Based Clustering of Semantic Web Resources
• Conceptual Clustering and Its Application to Concept Drift and Novelty Detection

Ontologies and Natural Language

• Enriching an Ontology with Multilingual Information
• Rabbit: Developing a Control Natural Language for Authoring Ontologies
• A Natural Language Query Interface to Structured Information
• Distinguishing between Instances and Classes in the Wikipedia Taxonomy

Ontology Alignment

• Two Variations on Ontology Alignment Evaluation: Methodological Issues
• Putting Ontology Alignment in Context: Usage Scenarios, Deployment and Evaluation in a Library Case
• CSR: Discovering Subsumption Relations for the Alignment of Ontologies

Query Processing

• XSPARQL: Traveling between the XML and RDF Worlds – and Avoiding the XSLT Pilgrimage
• Streaming SPARQL - Extending SPARQL to Process Data Streams
• The Creation and Evaluation of iSPARQL Strategies for Matchmaking
• Adding Data Mining Support to SPARQL Via Statistical Relational Learning Methods
• A Semantic Web Middleware for Virtual Data Integration on the Web
• Graph Summaries for Subgraph Frequency Estimation
• Querying Distributed RDF Data Sources with SPARQL
• Improving Interoperability Using Query Interpretation in Semantic Vector Spaces

Search

• Hybrid Search: Effectively Combining Keywords and Semantic Searches
• Combining Fact and Document Retrieval with Spreading Activation for Semantic Desktop Search
• Q2Semantic: A Lightweight Keyword Interface to Semantic Search

Semantic Web Services

• Conceptual Situation Spaces for Semantic Situation-Driven Processes
• Combining SAWSDL, OWL-DL and UDDI for Semantically Enhanced Web Service Discovery
• Web Service Composition with User Preferences
• Enhancing Workflow with a Semantic Description of Scientific Intent
• WSMO Choreography: From Abstract State Machines to Concurrent Transaction Logic
• WSMO-Lite Annotations for Web Services

Storage and Retrieval of Semantic Web Data

• Semantic Sitemaps: Efficient and Flexible Access to Datasets on the Semantic Web
• On Storage Policies for Semantic Web Repositories That Support Versioning

User Interface and Personalization

• Semantic Reasoning: A Path to New Possibilities of Personalization
• An User Interface Adaptation Architecture for Rich Internet Applications
• OntoGame: Weaving the Semantic Web by Online Games

Demo Papers

• SWING: An Integrated Environment for Geospatial Semantic Web Services
• Semantic Annotation and Composition of Business Processes with Maestro
• Learning Highly Structured Semantic Repositories from Relational Databases: The RDBToOnto Tool
• Cicero: Tracking Design Rationale in Collaborative Ontology Engineering
• xOperator – An Extensible Semantic Agent for Instant Messaging Networks
• LabelTranslator - A Tool to Automatically Localize an Ontology
• RKBExplorer.com: A Knowledge Driven Infrastructure for Linked Data Providers
• Semantic Browsing with PowerMagpie
• Tagster - Tagging-Based Distributed Content Sharing
• The Web Service Modeling Toolkit
• Mymory: Enhancing a Semantic Wiki with Context Annotations
• Pronto: A Non-monotonic Probabilistic Description Logic Reasoner
• User Profiling for Semantic Browsing in Medical Digital Libraries
• SWiM – A Semantic Wiki for Mathematical Knowledge Management
• Integrating Open Sources and Relational Data with SPARQL
• Previewing Semantic Web Pipes
• Demo: Visual Programming for the Semantic Desktop with Konduit
• SCARLET: SemantiC RelAtion DiscoveRy by Harvesting OnLinE OnTologies
• ODEWiki: A Semantic Wiki That Interoperates with the ODESeW Semantic Portal
• Simplifying Access to Large-Scale Health Care and Life Sciences Datasets
• GRISINO - An Integrated Infrastructure for Semantic Web Services, Grid Computing and Intelligent Objects
• SemSearch: Refining Semantic Search
• The Combination of Techniques for Automatic Semantic Image Annotation Generation in the IMAGINATION Application
• WSMX: A Solution for B2B Mediation and Discovery Scenarios
• Conceptual Spaces in ViCoS

You can buy the book at SpringerLink (EUR 93, Online orders shipping within 2-3 days). Online version is also available and even individual chapters can be bought.

A 119 page brochure was published today by the European Commission for Information Society and Media, titled “Future Networks & Services – Developing the Future of the Internet through European Research”.

The publication presents the various ongoing European activities and future trends in network and service technologies. The European Commission is aware of the importance of the development of the Internet. “The imperative role of Europe is, and will be, in broadening the borders of information and communication technologies (ICT) and in promoting a wide-spread use of the Internet.” – says Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media.

The document defines four main research fields:

• NETWORK OF THE FUTURE (Future Internet Technologies, Next Generation Mobile Technologies, Converged and Optical Networks)

• INTERNET OF SERVICES (Service Front Ends, Service Architectures, Virtualised Infrastructures, Service/Software Engineering)

• INTERNET OF THINGS (Integrated Interoperable Services, Next Generation RFID)

• 3D AND MEDIA INTERNET (User Generated Content, 3D Networked Virtual Environment, Multimedia Search)

You can find out more at “The European Future Internet Portal” which serves as the central forum for European activities and discussions on the future of the Internet, and which provides an overview on European research projects in the Future Internet area as well as regularly updated information on important events and other news.


You can also download the 119 page brochure.

18/08/2008 – Monday

• Ars Technica: Georgia cyberattacks lead to questions about risk to US

• Mashable: Six Apart Launches Blogs.com to Promote You — Maybe

• ReadWriteWeb: Yahoo! Opens Buzz Submissions to All - But is It Democratic?

• Wired: The Critics Need a Reboot. The Internet Hasn't Led Us Into a New Dark Age.

19/08/2008 – Tuesday

• The Next Web: Screw Digg’s pimple faces, Buzz will blow up our servers

• BusinessWeek: Is Microsoft's Vision of Search Enough to Catch Google?

• gHacks: Flickr Video Browser

• Mashable: Michael Phelps Has One Million Facebook Fans

• ReadWriteWeb: Most Popular Websites For Kids

20/08/2008 – Wednesday

• NYT: EBay Is Planning to Emphasize Fixed-Price Sales Format Over Its Auction Model

• BusinessWeek: Olympic Winner: Online Video

• Forbes: Intel, Yahoo! TV Dreams

• Gizmodo: Comcast's New Network Management Will Slow Down Heavy Users for Up to 20 Minutes

• ReadWriteWeb: China Detains 5 US Bloggers, Including Alive in Baghdad Founder

• TechCrunch: OpenSocial Now Reaches 350 Million Users, And Growing

• New Scientist: Google buries $10m in underground power
  

21/08/2008 – Thursday

• eMarketer: Web Video Ad Spend to Grow Worldwide
  

22/08/2008 – Friday

• BusinessWeek: Comic Books Evolve, from Ink to Internet

• Wired: iTunes blocked in China; Tibet album suspected

• TechCrunch: Facebook v. MySpace In The U.S. Market: The Music Factor

• ReadWriteWeb: CNN Wants to Go Viral: Enables Embeddable Videos

• NYT: The Year of the Political Blogger Has Arrived

24/08/2008 – Sunday

• Mashable: Russian Search Leader Yandex is Hungry for International Renown

Russia’s biggest social site, B KOHTAKTE (pronounced: V Kontakte) exceeded 16 million users worldwide. The site (sometimes called a Facebook rip-off) looks like world leading social site Facebook…

According to alexa.com figures, St. Petersburg based B KOHNTAKTE has a traffic rank of: 28 worldwide and it has the highest traffic rank in Russia.


The login procedure is almost the same: after an e-mail verification you are directed to fill in your personal information (contact information, place(s) you lived, education, working place(s), army related information, photos…). Under “Personal” you can provide various information about yourself: activities: participation in organizations, any voluntary work;
interests; favorite music, movies TV-shows, books, games, quotes; or give other information under “About me”.

The main menu (at the top of the page) has search, groups, events, people, invite, and logout submenus. There is another menu at the left side of the page: my profile, my friends, my photos, my videos, my messages, my notes, my groups, my events, my settings.

The colors, the page structure, the font type and many other design elements are almost the same as on Facebook.


I wonder why did the creators of B KOHTAKTE copy Facebook in such an extent? Did they do it simply because they thought that what is market leading today on the international market will be a success in Russia as well? Or do they plan to sell their service with their multimillion user base to Facebook in the future?

According to Intel’s press release, Intel and Yahoo! previewed plans yesterday at Intel’s Developer Forum in San Francisco of the "Widget Channel", a television application framework optimized for TV and related consumer electronics devices that use the Intel Architecture. The Widget Channel will allow consumers to enjoy rich Internet applications designed for the TV while watching their favorite TV programs.


The Widget Channel will be powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, a fifth-generation applications platform that will enable TV watchers to interact with and enjoy a rich set of “TV Widgets” or small Internet applications designed to complement and enhance the traditional TV watching experience and bring content, information and community features available on the Internet within easy reach of the remote control.

The Widget Channel will also allow developers to use JAVASCRIPT, XML, HTML and Adobe Flash technology to write TV applications for the platform, extending the power and compatibility of PC application developer programs to TV and related CE devices. Intel and Yahoo! are working with industry members to promote the development of open and consistent standards necessary to grow the TV Widget ecosystem. As part of their efforts, the companies are sharing an early version of a development kit for the Widget Channel with selected TV Widget developers now.

In addition to supporting the Yahoo! Widget Engine, Yahoo! will also provide consumers Yahoo!-branded TV Widgets that are customized based on its category-leading Internet services.

TV Widgets will enable consumers to engage in a variety of experiences, such as e.g.:

• watching videos or photos (e.g. Flickr),

• tracking their favorite stocks or sports teams,

• interacting with friends, or

• staying current on news and information.

Intel and Yahoo! are working with a range of industry-leading companies that are planning on developing and deploying TV Widgets, including Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Comcast, Disney-ABC Television Group, eBay, GE, Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba and Twitter.


You can find and see a video of this preview at ZDNet.com.

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• Yahoo plans software push for Net-enabled TVs
• Yahoo Wants to Bring the Internet to Your Living Room

Although more and more businesses today are leveraging technology to improve communication with employees, web 2.0 tools such as blogs, tagging and wikis are used only rarely in internal business communication.

This was one of the key findings of a survey based on more than 1,400 telephone interviews with CIOs from a random sample of U.S. companies with 100 or more employees developed by Robert Half Technology, a provider of information technology professionals on a project and full-time basis, and conducted by an independent research firm.

CIOs were asked, “Which of the following technology tools does your firm use or plan to use in the next five years for internal employee communication?”
Multiple responses were allowed:
It seems that most businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach with emerging forms of communication, including web 2.0 tools.

Read their related press release.

Surfing on YouTube yesterday I found several videos where the famous Muppets are telling their opinion about the Internet. As in life, their opinions are quite different… : - )

"The internet is a completely different culture, isn’t it?" ...


"What would we do without the internet?" …


The Internet is for Porn – Sesame Street Style
(you can also find the Muppet version)


Lolly – Internet Love


"I’m here to offer you something never before seen on the Internet: culture, morality and patriotism!"…


"Mhhh… How many hits did that stuff receive? … Unfortunately not enough to kill it!"

11/08/2008 – Monday

• Ars Technica: Georgian government: websites attacked by Russian hackers
  

• Wired: Estonia, Google Help 'Cyberlocked' Georgia (Updated)
  

• The Next Web: Gmail: down
  

• ReadWriteWeb: Is Facebook the Most Popular Social Bookmarking Service on the Web?

12/08/2008 – Tuesday

• Mashable: Twitter and Pownce Implement Following Limits
  

• ZDNet: Semantic web on verge of commercial viability
  

• ZDNet: Gartner: Web 2.0 set to transform business
  

13/08/2008 – Wednesday

• Internet Evolution: Social Networking at Ford: Community Is Job One
  

• Mark Evans: More Competition but Google Still Dominates
  

14/08/2008 – Thursday

• BBC: End nears in Facebook legal row
  

• NYT: Dutch Police and F.B.I. Rein in Large Botnet
  

• NYT: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo Sued for Sex Selection Ads in India
  

• Outside the Lines: Is Google leaving billions of dollars on the table?
  

15/08/2008 – Friday

• Business Week: Google's Upcoming Phone: More Details
  

• TechCrunch: Google Turns On AdSense For Feeds
  

• Ars Technica: YouTube user sues Google for his slice of the traffic
  

• Wired: Back to the Future: Google Fares Better Than Apple
  

16/08/2008 – Saturday

• The Next Web: Czech search engine Seznam on the block for $1 billion or more?

17/08/2008 – Sunday

• Ars Technica: We're running out of IPv4 addresses. Time for IPv6. Really

Social media has penetrated parts of the business world at a tremendous speed, according to a survey summary of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, which compared corporate adoption of social media between 2007 and 2008 by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. The results of the survey also indicate that corporate familiarity with and usage of social media within the fastest-growing Inc. 500 has nearly doubled in the past 12 months.


In their 2007 study (using the 2006 Inc. 500 list) 8% of the Fortune 500 companies (biggest) were blogging compared to 19% of the Inc. 500 (fastest-growing). Their latest study (using the 2007 Inc. 500 list) revealed that today just 11.6% of the Fortune 500 companies are having a public blog (a 3.6% increase) while 39% of the Inc. 500 companies are blogging (a 20% increase).


The social media that continues to be the most familiar to the Inc. 500 is social networking with 57% of respondents in 2008 claiming to be “very familiar with it” (compared to 42% in 2007). Familiarity is related to usage. Even those forms of social media less familiar to the participants are still used by at least 20% of them. Just over one quarter of the Inc. 500 reported social media was very important to their business/marketing strategy in 2007. That number has increased to 44% just one year later.


You can read the resume of the study.

Wuala is a free social online file storage service from Switzerland which allows its users to securely store, backup, and access files from anywhere and to share files easily with friends, groups, and the world. Tens of thousands of users and thousands of communities around the world are already actively sharing millions of files, growing quickly. Almost 10 million files are already stored on Wuala.


According to Wuala’s own service description, it is based on a revolutionary technology that was researched for the most part at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This enables its users to trade parts of their local storage for online storage and it allows us to provide a better service for free. In the following video Dominik Grolimund will explain what Wuala is and how it works.

Users start with 1 GB of storage but can get as much as they want, either by trading idle disk space or by buying additional storage. All files get encrypted before they leave the user's computer and the user chooses who gets access to which folder. No one else - including them - gets to see the files. Wuala comes as a convenient application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that can also be started directly from within the browser, elegantly bridging web and desktop.

Visit Wuala.

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• Interview with Wuala Founder/CEO Dominik Grolimund

I came across three graphs about web 2.0 communication services created by Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley.

It is interesting to see the notes Flickr users made to this graph (above), supplementing the picture.


(Of course, the lists are not complete – no one can give a complete picture of the rapidly changing web 2.0 service market.)

Read their article.

An informative 38 page slide was created by TrendSpotting.com on China, the largest market for Internet users (253 MM as of June 2008).

Handbook of Online China

View SlideShare presentation (tags: web trend trends powerpoint olympics)

Read their article.

In 2009-2010 EUR 69 million from the EU's research program will go to digitization activities and the development of digital libraries, the European Commission confirmed today in order to help Member States bring their valuable cultural content online – according to an EU Commission press release.

In the same period, Europe's Competitiveness and Innovation Programme will allocate about EUR 50 million to improve access to Europe's cultural content. However, the total cost of digitizing five million books in Europe's libraries is already estimated at approximately EUR 225 million, not including objects like manuscripts or paintings.

Realizing the vision of a European Digital Library (Europeana) needs substantial investment from national institutions, but at present most countries only provide small scale, fragmented funding for digitization. The Commission today called on Member States to raise digitization capacities to make their collections available for Europe's citizens, team up with the private sector, and address the following priorities:

• More funding needs to be allocated to digitization, along with plans for how much material will be digitized.
• Most countries still lack methods, technologies and experience for the preservation of digital material, vital so that content remains accessible to future generations.
• Common standards need to be implemented to make different information sources and databases compatible for and usable by the European Digital Library (Europeana).

The European Digital Library is part of the i2010 initiative adopted by the Commission on 1 June 2005.

The work towards a European Digital Library involves tackling political, human, technical and semantic issues in order to facilitate an interoperable system between the cultural institutions in Europe. In autumn 2007, seventy senior managers and technical experts from museums, archives, audiovisual collections and libraries all across the EU started work in a thematic network co-funded by the European Commission’s eContentplus program, to prepare a detailed plan for realizing the vision of the European Digital Library and for what they have named Europeana. Their work builds on the success of earlier initiatives ― the longest running one being a service called The European Library (TEL), a search facility across 150 million titles from 172 collections in 31 European national libraries.

By November 2008, Europeana will provide a multilingual interface with direct access to at least two million digitized objects selected from among what is already digitised and available from some of Europe’s major museums, archives and libraries. Content will be taken in from aggregators and national portals or will be harvested from individual organisations. Special attention is paid to the needs of the visually impaired. By 2010 the number of digital items accessible through Europeana will go far beyond the six million originally envisaged. Moreover, Europeana will not just be limited to public domain material but, where possible, will also concentrate on representing Europe’s more recent cultural records.

For further information you may read the 27 page Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.

Monitter is a mashup which lets you "monitter" the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords which you type: type three words into the three search boxes and within seconds you'll start seeing relevant tweets streaming live.

You can fine tune your monitoring stream: type a city or country and choose a distance (kilometers or miles) within which you would like to monitor the results of the Twitter defined stream.


You can even download a Monitter widget which you can put on your site.

04/08/2008 – Monday

• BBC: Microsoft sees end of Windows era

05/08/2008 – Tuesday

• TechCrunch: Another Google Exec Departs To Run Another Social Network: Kimber To Friendster

06/08/2008 – Wednesday

• Ars Technica: 40 million stolen credit cards later, DoJ charges 11 hackers

• TechCrunch: Computer Attack Disguised As Twitter Spam

• The Next Web: Booming Russia: advertising spending increases by 73%

07/08/2008 – Thursday

• ZDNEt: Time Warner confirms AOL will be split in two

• Ars Technica: Hands on: Rejaw melds microblogging with instant chat

• comScore: Facebook Audience Triples in Japan During Past Year, According to comScore

• Facebook Blog: Facebook Security: Fighting the Good Fight

• Internet Evolution: Nokia Unveils 'Automatic' Cellular Email

• TechCrunch: Elaborate Facebook Worm Virus Spreading

08/08/2008 – Friday

• NYT: Facebook Was in Talks to Buy German Social Site

• The Next Web: French illegal movie downloads almost equal box office sales

• CMS Wire: Google Uncreates the Google Page Creator

10/08/2008 – Sunday

• Ars Technica: Free advertising for The Pirate Bay: Italian ISPs block site

• The Next Web: Facebook Under Massive Phishing Attack From China
  

According to a new PEW report on daily internet activities of users in the US, the percentage of internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of 49%. Online search is the second most frequent daily internet activity of an average user in the US following the most popular activity: e-mail usage (with 60% of users using e-mail daily).

This chart shows the percentage of internet users who did these activities "yesterday," which in a tracking survey like this one yields a picture of the "typical day" online.

Internet users with higher levels of education are more likely to use search on a typical day:
College graduate +: 66%
Some college: 49%
High school graduate or less: 32%

Internet users living in higher-income households are more likely to use search on a typical day:
$75,000 +: 62%
$50,000 – 74,999: 56%
$30,000 – 49,999: 34%
<$30,000: 36%

Those who use broadband connections at home are significantly more likely than those who use dial-up to have ever tried using search engines at all. These are the percentages according to type of internet connections for those who search on a typical day:
Broadband at home: 58%
Dial-up at home: 26%

Younger internet users have been consistently more likely to search on a typical day over the last five years of survey research:
18 – 29 years: 55%
30 – 49 years: 54%
50 – 64 years: 40%
65 years and older: 27%

Men are significantly more likely than women to search on a typical day:
Men: 53%
Women: 45%

The survey of this report – involving 2,251 adults, age 18 and older – was taken April 8 - May 11, 2008 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Read the entire report.

If you are a movie lover, Reelz Review brings useful movie related data for your preview to hangout when you want to find the right movie and want to decide where to buy it or rent it.

The site uses Open API’s from Amazon, Yahoo, Ebay, Google, YouTube and other online resources to get movie related data, new releases, movie ratings, reviews, price comparisons, best deals, Rental Offers, all in one simple, easy to view mash up page. One other useful feature of the site is that you can view all related movie clips from YouTube at Reelz Review itself.

Most interesting features:
Dynamic Display - Web 2.0 Style
Yahoo and IMDB User Ratings
Best Deals - DVD Price Comparison
User Reviews from Amazon, Yahoo and IMDB
Related YouTube Movie Clips available for view without leaving the site.
RedBox Kiosk Online - Rent directly from the website on a single click.
ITunes - Rent or Buy directly from the website on a single click.

Visit Reelz Review.

Twine is a (relatively) new service for keeping up with your interests and meeting other like-minded people. It's based on the Semantic Web and is an example of the next wave of smarter Web apps.

Watch these videos - made by Nova Spivack, the founder and CEO of Twine - to learn how to get into Twine and how to quickly start using it.

Scratch is a new programming language, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, which makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share your creations on the web.

Scratch projects are made up of objects called sprites. You can change how a sprite looks by giving it a different costume. You can make a sprite look like whatever you want: a person or a train or a butterfly. You can use any image as a costume: you can draw an image in the Paint Editor, import an image from your hard disk, or drag in an image from a website. You can give instructions to a sprite, telling it to move or play music or react to other sprites. To tell a sprite what to do, you snap together graphic blocks into stacks, called scripts. When you double-click on a script, Scratch runs the blocks from the top of the script to the bottom.

The interface of the downloadable program is designed to enable even a child to use it:


The Stage is where you see your stories, games, and animations come to life. Sprites move and interact with one another on the Stage.

When you start a new Scratch project, it begins with a single cat sprite. You can create new sprites: paint your own costume for a new sprite using the Paint Editor; select a costume for a new sprite – or import an entire sprite; or get a surprise sprite. (You can even use a LEGO image pack donated by LEGO to make your own animations.)

To make a sprite that looks like part of the Stage background, right-click the Stage and select grab screen region for new sprite.

To program a sprite, drag out blocks from the Blocks Palette to the Scripts Area. To run a block, double-click on it. Create scripts (programs) by snapping blocks together into stacks. Double-click anywhere on the stack to run the whole script, from top to bottom. To find out what a block does, right-click on it, then select help from the pop-up menu.

Click the Costumes tab to see and edit the sprite’s costumes. There are three ways to create new costumes: click to paint a new costume in the Paint Editor; click to import an image file from your hard disk; drag in one or more images from the web or your desktop.

Click the Sounds tab to see the sprite’s sounds. You can record new sounds and import sound files. Scratch can read MP3 files and uncompressed WAV, AIF, and AU files.


Some of the most important educational benefits of using Scratch

• Scratch encourages creative thinking, an increasingly important skill in today’s rapidly changing world.

• By working on Scratch projects, students learn to select, create, and manage multiple forms of media, including text, images, animation, and audio recordings. As students gain experience creating with media, they become more perceptive and critical in analyzing the media they see in the world around them.

• Scratch engages young people in choosing, manipulating, and integrating a variety of media in order to express themselves creatively and persuasively.

• As they learn to program in Scratch, young people become engaged in critical reasoning and systems thinking. In order to build projects, students need to coordinate the timing and interactions between multiple “sprites” (programmable moving objects). The ability to program interactive input provides students direct experience with sensing, feedback, and other fundamental systems concepts.

• Scratch supports problem finding and solving in a meaningful design context. Creating a Scratch project requires thinking of an idea, then figuring out how to break the problem into steps and implement them using Scratch programming blocks. Scratch is designed to be “tinkerable”: students can dynamically change pieces of code and immediately see the results (e.g., doubling a number to see how it changes a graphic effect). Throughout the design process, students engage in experimenting and iterative problem-solving.

• Because Scratch programs are shareable, students can use Scratch to provoke discussion of important issues with other members of their immediate learning environment, as well as with the wider international Scratch community.

To know more about this project and to download the program, visit the Scratch site.

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• Scratch for Second Life so even Vint can script?