About visualization tools
Posted by: Fidji SIMO in Blogging, Innovation, Internet/Technology
If, like me, you better understand a great image or chart than some text, you should have a look at the article I just published on Tech IT Easy about visualization tools for shopping, search and social networking.
Having added the Mybloglog widget on Tech IT Easy has shown me that Tech IT Easy and A Fresh Start (up) have almost the same loyal readership (even if I have less readers on the latest than on the first one of course!). But in case you don’t know Tech IT Easy yet, it is an amazing blog with amazing authors (of course I am one of them ;-)) founded by Jérémy Fain: if you are a Tech addict you must take a look at it, and if you think that you have interesting things to say about Tech do not hesitate to drop me or Jérémy an email to become part of our dream team of bloggers!
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My initial reaction when I tried Touchgraph is “ouaah, I managed to make my pseudo a real entity, because I want my pseudo appears only compared to my blogs and bands”. My second thought, which is very naive (I know it) is: “beyond the “artistic” side of the thing, I find this search tool frightens me a little, because it is too simple to see your actions on the net, which you like and where you are listed (by the unknown people or by one who can target you with ads).”
Therefore, I have not this feeling of importance at all. And I admit some of these tools serve a practical and fun purpose, above all for shopping.
I completely understand your reaction, especially since these tools are really accurate: with a search on my name, my blog (which is the most relevant) has the largest size whereas it does not top Google results. And the visual aspect makes it even more obvious as you can really see all the clusters of your online presence. The theme of online ID management seems to be really touchy at the momen with the huge PR coverage of Spock, but I am sure that you are fully aware of what you do when you put innfo on you online. Concerning ads, I consider that it is the price to pay to have quality services for free, so I am not so much concerned about it.
Yes, I know the polemic with Spock! To continue with vizualisation tools, Google launched a great tool which is called “Gapminder”. It is a comparative tool which shows the gap between the countries of the world since 1960 and on various aspects (for instance: child mortality per 1000 born, urban population, economic growth, …).
Another intelligent app with map is: http://a.placebetween.us/ (by the way, maybe you will use it!).
Didn’t know about these apps, they’re great, thanks!
[...] A few weeks ago I wrote an article about visualization tools where I said that these tools must either have a clear artistic purpose or must be really useful by improving understanding. Twitter blocks is none of them. I tried to understand the basic principles of this visualization, and it appears that it only allows you to see the timeline of the friends who have updated their Twitter feed recently. I didn’t even understand why some blocks are higher than others. [...]
[...] I’m really interested in visualization tools especially when they become art projects. But what about building a visual representation of the Internet itself? Everybody is aware of the success on The Million Dollar Page mainly because of the simplicity of the business model to gain easily lots of money, but it’s also a major Net art project that is a visual metaphor for what the Internet was in 2005. The creator Alex Tew even said: “One of my original aims was to create a piece of Internet art that reflects what’s current on the Internet and what’s possible, because I’ve made a million from that image. I want to create an Internet capsule to keep for years.” [...]