That may be about to change, thanks to the biggest breakthrough in the visual display of words and pictures since the invention of television--a new technology that promises a world where information is portable, cheap and stunningly vivid.

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There is even some visual humor in places (three words: lemon-powered battery).

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Phil Duncan: Well, first of all we make sure we can translate the big idea, or ideal, in a signature visual or with a few simple words.

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Illustrators began using Moore's words to mold a visual image of Santa Claus almost as soon as the poem was first printed in upstate New York's Troy Sentinel in 1823.

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For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a word cloud is a visual representation of the most frequently used words in a given document or, in this case, a speech.

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The project began in the summer of 2010, when Rodrigo Corral, a book designer who has created covers for Junot Diaz, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jay-Z, began to toy with the idea of a visual novel that used images, rather than words, to tell the story.

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Vimeo also says the novel feature will be able to make recommendations based on "technical analysis of the user's video and social data, " -- in other words, the more you use it, the more likely it is to learn your very own visual preferences.

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