Inflo is a web tool that introduces new ways to collaboratively construct and deconstruct logical arguments drawn as visual dataflow graphs. Inflo graphs are dynamic: nodes are logical propositions that can contain computations based on other nodes. Inflo nodes and graphs have URLs, permitting sharing via blogs, e-mails, papers, etc. People can collaboratively construct, refine, and adapt/reuse arguments by making changes to shared nodes. Combining community-curated nodes and using Inflo's nodes for computation, back-of-the-envelope calculations can rapidly be made.

reCAPTCHA is a technology that aims to stop computers from abusing automated services (e.g., stop spamming) while harnessing a large amount of brainpower to complete tasks amenable to being broken into small quanta. The technology, currently owned by Google, is being used to make old documents searchable with digital text through the process of optical character recognition (OCR). It has proven to be accurate and effective. In this paper, the ethics and legality of reCAPTCHA as it is currently used is discussed. Solutions for improving reCAPTCHA in these two contexts are proposed.

Flow and causal loop diagrams can be used by content creators to illustrate how variables in a system impact one another. Such diagrams are used in educational settings to illustrate concepts like food cycles in an ecosystem and energy flows in climate models. We demonstrate how our tool, InfloGraphic, can produce interactive diagrams either by augmenting existing static diagrams produced using common tools users may already be familiar and have available such as the Gimp or Adobe Photoshop or by using a preexisting image or web page. Content consumers can use these interactive diagrams to visualize how changes to one part of a system can ripple through a system.

Inflo is a web-based tool designed to support quantitative decision-making problems such as carbon calculators. Using the dataflow programming paradigm, Inflo provides an extensible environment for end-user programming. Inflo is built around the idea of collaboration and openness for opportunistic code-reuse and unplanned code sharing.

Replications play an important role in verifying empirical results. In this paper, we discuss our experiences performing a literal replication of a human subjects experiment that examined the relationship between a simple test for consistent use of mental models, and success in an introductory programming course. We encountered many difficulties in achieving comparability with the original experiment, due to a series of apparently minor differences in context. Based on this experience, we discuss the relative merits of replication, and suggest that, for some human subjects studies, literal replication may not be the the most effective strategy for validating the results of previous studies.