Expectlabs

LATEST ARTICLES ( 401 )

• The Secret Formula Behind Memorable Movie Quotes

  

  What makes a line quoteworthy? A study out of Cornell examines why specific movie phrases end up becoming part of our collective consciousness. Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• MindMeld in The New York Times

  

  MindMeld was included in today’s New York Times article about apps that use predictive search to anticipate what a user needs before ever having to ask for... Read more

  Posted on 30 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Explaining Baby Talk With Birdsong

  

  A deeper understanding of human language acquisition is coming out of a new study involving songbirds. An element of vocal development in birds could explain ho... Read more

  Posted on 25 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Why We Say "Ah-choo"

  

  If sneezing is an involuntary act, why is the sound “ah-choo" so distinct to English (sneezing) speakers? The reason we feel compelled to interject onomatopoeia... Read more

  Posted on 23 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Liberty Global & IDG Ventures Make Strategic Investment in Expect Labs

  

  Today we are excited to introduce Liberty Global and IDG Ventures to the Expect Labs family. The two companies will join our current backers, including top... Read more

  Posted on 22 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• What 62,676 Messages Look Like

  

  The visualization above is a result of 62,676 messages exchanged on Skype over a three-year time span. Designers Julia Laub and Cedric Kiefe regularly spoke on... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• The ___ Linguistics of Mad Libs

  

  Mad Libs is the weird little word game where players plug in parts of speech to spontaneously end up with a story. It was invented in 1953 when Leonard Stern an... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Fortune Brainstorm TECH 2013

  

  Tim Tuttle, founder and CEO of Expect Labs, was invited to speak at the much anticipated Fortune Brainstorm TECH on Monday, July 22nd. Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• A Sincere Etymology Lesson

  

  What is the sincerest origin of the word “sincere?" One theory claims that “sincere" evolved from two Latin words: sine (without) and cera (wax). Read more

  Posted on 16 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Texting Gender Differences

  

  The graph above represents the gender differences in emoticon usage among teenagers, taken from the book:Â Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media. Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• How Language Affects Our Wealth

  

  Could the way a person’s language marks the future affect their likelihood of saving for that same future? While this might sound crazy, new research shows a... Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Explaining Humor with Linguistics

  

  The ability to appreciate humor begins with scripts, which are assumptions about the world derived from our experiences. To understand a joke, we have to... Read more

  Posted on 11 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• MindMeld Computing Truths

  

  Forrester’s JP Gownder recently sat down with our CEO to talk about MindMeld, and how our work... Read more

  Posted on 10 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• "Tip of the Tongue" Explained

  

  Lethologica describes the annoying experience of having a word on the “tip of your tongue" that you are unable to fully grasp. Read more

  Posted on 09 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• An Invented Synesthetic Alphabet

  

  Do all languages have elements of synesthesia? The image above is taken from the Takeluma... Read more

  Posted on 08 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• The Visual Language of Comic Books

  

  In English we read in a Z-pattern; first from left to right, and once we hit the end of the page, we stop and continue on the upper left-hand side of the next... Read more

  Posted on 03 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• User Interfaces & Optical Illusions

  

  Marsal Gavaldà, Expect Labs’ Director of Research, runs an annual conference in Barcelona that examines a topic at the intersection of technology and culture. Read more

  Posted on 02 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• How to Get Semantically Satiated

  

  If you repeat a word enough times, its meaning disappears. This peculiarity, called semantic satiation, occurs when speech is turned into empty sounds after... Read more

  Posted on 01 July 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Churchill & the Invention of OMG

  

  Winston Churchill and the most popular texting abbreviation ever are inextricably linked. In 1917, British admiral John Fisher sent a letter to Churchill... Read more

  Posted on 28 June 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH

• Your Emoji Usage Explained

  

  Emojis are Japanese pictographs that inject character into our nuance-starved text messages. While... Read more

  Posted on 27 June 2013 LANGUAGES, TECH