A conversation with Brian August 31, 2007
Posted by heperimita in data display, ideas, interactivity.4 comments
After seeing Brian’s Visualized Concepts post I was intrigued, but at the same time not entirely sure what the whole euler diagram thing was representative of. I had a conversation with Brian over IM that we agreed should be posted up here on the blog because it clarified a lot of things.
Me: i liked the visual of your idea
Brian: NeatMe: but im not sure if i completely understand it
Brian: Well, it wasn’t what I intended but I could really get that out
Me: the biggest disc of those series of discs, say the data represented news stories, would represent news in its broadest sense, am i correct?
Brian: Mmhmm. Each successive disk is a set of more specific stories
Me: so the next circle would be like new in the united states, and then the next would be politics, and then demoocrats and so forth am i right so far?
Brian: Mmhmm
Me: oh i get that part, but how do you get to see the interrelatedness that all the pieces of each set of data share?
Brian: Well, I couldn’t quite figure out how to display that.
Me: the aforementioned concept is the main drive of your idea though right?
Brian: yes, and now that I think about it, I believe that the circles would have to go in the reverse order which I gave them, If stories are getting more and more specific, they would have more and more tags, right?
Me: right, ok i think i see where you are going, if it was reverse order, the smallest disc would be items tagged news and then the next disc, which would be bigger than the first, would be political news, for example
brian: Right
me: i mean items tagged with politics and news
brian: Yes!
Me: yeah that makes a lot of sense and the more tags the story has the bigger the disc it would have
brian: Right
Me: i see why it is an euler diagram and not a ven diagram, because the euler allows you to organize unrelated subsets
Brian: Yeah, Venn diagrams must have all sets connecting
Me: right, there has to be some sort of overlap with a venn.
ok now does this function as a news interface? or is it a presentation of the interrelatedness of storiesBrian: The latter, I suppose If there were this means of navigation in the middle which was visually represented by my picture, there could be some initial qualitative factors to determine the compared news. You could, say, pick “Chinese news” and “American news” and then go down by tags. Start with politics. And the disk goes up a level to Chinese political stories on the right and American on the left, then pick democrats, then pick caucus, then …
Me: barrak obama?
Brian: Sure, Although at that point I think it might break I don’t know how much Chinese news would relate the two Other than that, I don’t know what else this would do
Me: hmm right, well it would be cool if it generated the stories related to barak obama and chinese politics
Brian: lol, Yeah. I think I mostly want people to get the feel that they’re not alone in the world, that similar occurances are spread across the planet
Me: hmm, well what about if it linked blog post tags together
Brian: Conceptually, it’s supposed to link any form of news with similar tags You just need to pick a medium. So, yes for blog posts
Me: ahh, i thought that would go well with the “not being along” theme
Brian: I agree. I mean, why not have text linked to podcasts covering the same material?
me: oh right, you could even do it with music and genres of music, subect matter of the songs etc
Brian: Mmhmm, It’s the categorization that matters. As long as people have tagged items accurately and plentifully, it should be good between any media.
Visualized Concepts August 29, 2007
Posted by Brian in data display, ideas.3 comments
Some people wanted a visual for what I was thinking about, and I think this is as close as I can make within reasonable time:
It’s not quite Venn diagrams, but as I mentioned before, I realized I actually meant Euler diagrams. You can see sets within sets. Think of it like this: your computer has many folders within it. Specifically, one folder would represent one piece of a bar (read: one topic or tag). Folders of similar types would be similar colors, I suppose. You can go into a folder, and it too would have many sub-folders within it. And so on and so forth. Eventually you get to very specific files (i.e. stories). This is like the very bottom circle of bars in the picture.
In the way I originally intended it, there would be a way to choose and compare stories of similar tags. I suppose that there could be another bar within these circles that would separate by country. Or just by a tag. I want people to be able to see where similar stories are happening elsewhere. This set of circles could be the American stories with these sets of stories, but there could be an option to see ones from other countries.
PS: I edited my mash-ups post from earlier yesterday.
new girl’s new ideas August 27, 2007
Posted by rebeccaperez in data display, ideas, maps.4 comments
This is my first idea:
I am creating a central database using google maps as a project for credit here at Kansas state, I was wondering if you guys had thought about using the map idea of hyperzoom to tell stories that news readers want that doesn’t relate to crime. This could be a great tool for obits online. The ability to create a “lives that have been touched” map for the deceased with flickr pictures tied to the places. Groups they belonged to, schools attended, so on and so forth. The map idea could also be used for arts and entertainment sections. I think the obit idea would have to be an online company that only does obits. but if a newspaper wanted to make there own online obits I think they could, but the obit idea works best if each person gets their own map. Newspapers could also do something similar each day with their arts and entertainment sections. Pictures and clips for bands, theater, concerts, and general events. I can’t tell you how often I wished there had been a map that came with the arts section.
Second idea really doesn’t fit with the germ idea, but I thought it was a good idea. I’m just not sure if it is even possible at this time:
A program that reads all text on your computer outloud. At first I would say a male and a female voice would be the choices, but eventually I would like to see a variety of celebrity voices that the user could choose from. The ability to hear the news while working on something else would help to increase consumption.
I had a bunch more ideas, unfortunately I have since forgotten them. Sucks to get old. I really liked the idea of taking online submissions and turning them into papers, but it is already being done, so I don’t think that would be a great idea to bring to ONA as a new idea. haha. If I can remember anything else I’ll post it.
Maybe we could get some cues from… August 22, 2007
Posted by Jeff in data display, software, tools.add a comment
* the GUI (graphical user interface) for the OLPC (one laptop per child) seems to be very promising in the “community” aspect. It is introducing what could be deemed a “new paradigm” in personal computing – switching from the window-based interface to something completely different. Their demo shows what it is like.
* Microsoft is introducing a competitor to Flash called Silverlight. As a demonstration of this product, they have made a new search website called tafiti. Looks promising, but their search still sucks.
Google Going for the Gooold August 21, 2007
Posted by Brian in data display, mashups, software, statistics, tools.add a comment
People want to know how they’re connected. But we don’t have a clear-cut means of doing so yet.
Google is developing a social network aggregator. (This, of course, means that social sites existing as walled-gardens would be out of the loop. I wonder how many will open up after this?) Google wants to be the main provider of a social graph (a big visualization of how everyone is connected). Google also realizes that “[p]eople are getting sick of registering and re-declaring their friends on every site, but also: Developing ‘Social Applications’ is too much work.”
The man who founded LiveJournal left for Google, and he has some ideas for the social graph himself:
- Open-source software for such graphing
- Decentralization of information for such graphing
- Right-after-sign-up addition of “old information” to new network
- Syncing multiple sites for a user
- Not to replace _____
And has anyone heard of FOAF, the Friend of a Friend Project? It’s going to try to show how you’re related to everyone else, which sounds like XFN, the XML Friends Network, which links people by metadata.
Universe August 21, 2007
Posted by jonathan686 in data display, software, tools.2 comments
I’m not sure if this inspires or intimidates me, but this TED talks video of Jonathan Harris includes a few awesome data display interfaces. In particular, Universe, which he discusses at the end, displays and connects news stories from around the world.
