Expectlabs

LATEST ARTICLES ( 401 )

• Linguistic Reduplication, Or the Art of Repetitious Words

  

  “Helter Skelter” is not only one of the Beatles’ wildest songs, but also a prime example of a reduplicative word in all its glory. Read more

  Posted on 22 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Art Inspired by Phonetics

  

  “Dialogues” is a phonetics-inspired piece by designer Steve Haslip that is featured in the book, The Triumph of the Commons: 55 Theses on the Future. Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• The Code-Switching Phenomenon

  

  NPR recently launched a new blog called Code Switch, dedicated to themes involving ethnicity, culture, and race, and how we go back and forth between different... Read more

  Posted on 18 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Gartner Recognizes Expect Labs as a "Cool Vendor" in Mobile Apps

  

  Expect Labs was selected as one of only five “Cool Vendors” in Gartner’s 2013 list of “Cool Vendors in Consumer Mobile Applications. Read more

  Posted on 17 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Why We Hate the Sound of Our Voice

  It’s always a surprise to hear a recording of our own voices. Jordan Gaines, a PhD candidate at Penn State, writes that the aversion to our own voice occurs... Read more

  Posted on 15 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• America, The Profane: Where We Swear

  

  The map above shows where our country’s “politest” and “rudest” Twitter users are, based on tweets that mentioned either “Good Morning” or “F*** You. Read more

  Posted on 12 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Singing Lessons from an Opera Star

  

  In 1902, German opera singer and voice teacher, Lilli Lehmann, penned a book to explore the art and science of singing, aptly titled How To Sing. Read more

  Posted on 11 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• A Short History of the "Dude"

  

  “The Dude abides.“ - The Big Lebowski, a.k.a the holy grail for modern dudes. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, people have been calling each other... Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Expect Labs at Mobile Voice 2013

  

  We are happy to announce that our own Marsal Gavaldà will be presenting at the Mobile Voice Conference on April 15th in San Francisco. Read more

  Posted on 09 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Place Name Etymology: How Our Earth Is Just Like Middle-earth

  

  What did people experience when they first looked at a place? The Atlas of True Names attempts to reveal that sense of wonder by unearthing the original... Read more

  Posted on 08 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• What NBC's Community Can Teach Us About Sarcasm

  In the clip above, Abed from Community attempts to teach us what makes something sarcastic. Abed’s exaggeration makes this scene particularly funny given that... Read more

  Posted on 05 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Making The Audible Visual

  

  What does sound look like as it travels through air? The image above is a visualization of a Hungarian fiddle recording created by Born of Sound. Click here to... Read more

  Posted on 04 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Good For Art, Bad For Happiness: Pop Music Is Getting Sadder

  

  We hope this doesn’t depress you: According to a study published last year by Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto, songs have become increasingly... Read more

  Posted on 03 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• The Fine Art of Italian Hand Gestures

  

  Italians are famous for using hand gestures to underscore what they’re saying, particularly in the area around Naples. In Bruno Munari’s book, Speak Italian: Th... Read more

  Posted on 02 April 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• An Academic Analysis of LOLspeak

  LOLcats have gone from infectious Internet meme to academia. In a lecture presented at the Australian Linguistic Society conference, Jill Vaughan and Lauren... Read more

  Posted on 29 March 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Google Image Search As Art

  

  Dina Kelberman is the brains behind I’m Google; an endless feed of visually similar pictures from... Read more

  Posted on 28 March 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Um, English Isn't The Only Language With Filler Words

  

  Did you know that the often unconscious compulsion to say “um,” “like,” and “you know,” occurs across all languages? Filler words are neutral words or sounds... Read more

  Posted on 26 March 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Slip Of The Tongue, Or Metathesis?

  One way words evolve over time is through metathesis, which is the transposition of sounds or syllables in a word. After some time, if enough people pronounce... Read more

  Posted on 25 March 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• What A Conversation Looks Like

  

  How can we visualize a conversation? Francis Lam is a new media artist from MIT who created the above visualization to represent the kinds of shapes our... Read more

  Posted on 22 March 2013 COMPUTING, TECH

• Vintage Diagrams From A 1963 Science Book The Diagrams Above...

  The diagrams above are taken from The Speech Chain: The Physics and Biology of Spoken Language, published in 1963 by Bell Labs. The book was part of an... Read more

  Posted on 21 March 2013 COMPUTING, TECH