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Tuesday, May 07, 2002 |
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A picture of weblogs
Jon Schull asks of Casey Marshall's Picture of Weblogs: "Is this enlightening or bedazzling?" Well, exactly. These kinds of connectedness graphs are briefly fun and interesting, but a graphical toolkit wants to do so much more. It wants to use shape, size, color, intensity, text, hypertext, and many other devices to map out dimensions beyond just who is connected to whom.
The most challenging dimension of analysis is time. To record data over time takes the diligence and patience of a stop-motion photographer. What would the resulting movie show? Waves of influence propagating through blogspace, perhaps. Some nodes growing in size and exerting more gravitational attraction, others fading, still others oscillating.
(PS: Jon, your image doesn't appear because it's locally referenced (http://localhost:5335...). Don't worry. Happens to every new Radio user. I keep meaning to write an onPost filter that catches these errors.)
12:56:35 PM 
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RSS truncation shouldn't be an either/or choice
Jenny Levine asks: "Should I Truncate My RSS Feed? I know the point of a news aggregator is to scan, but I personally like not having to go to each site to read a whole post." Jim McGee adds:
A news aggregator...uses technology to eliminate some of the time-wasters in our environment. One implication is that for sources of information to be useful may depend on how well they can fit themselves into my evolving information/knowledge environment. This runs contrary to most current design thinking that attempts to exert complete control over your information experience.
For my purposes, I much prefer to get Jenny's stories in full form. It allows me to integrate the considerable value of her insights into my information environment....I want to be able to exert control over my information environment, not be subject to the varying design sensibilities of different web sites. [McGee's Musings]
I voted Yes on Jenny's survey (which is running near 50/50 just now). But in truth, it's a choice she ought not have to make. For the reader, RSS truncation trades immediacy for scannability. Ultimately, the author should provide for both. And news aggregators should be prepared to work with both. Jim might want all his feeds in long form. Or perhaps, all of Jenny's feeds in long form but mine as blurbs.
It's not rocket science. I guess the place to start is with variants (blurb plus full item) in my own feed. This will also be a chance to test out what happens when I add experimental tags.
10:00:27 AM
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If you look through a macroscope, what will you see?
In An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks writes about the failure of an adult, blind since birth, to learn how to see following vision-restoring surgery. Visual hardware alone isn't enough. We also need a lifetime of experience using it.
The contemporary story of Mike May, who is featured in the June issue of Discover (not yet online), echoes that theme. May can see his wife's face, for example, but cannot recognize it. Nevertheless, the outcome here seems more hopeful. Although May's integration of his newly-repaired visual hardware may never be complete, he started with low expectations and is thrilled to be able to find a ball that he's dropped, or to perceive the colors of his sons' eyes.
That's probably a good attitude to take with us into the coming era of information visualization. Patterns seen through a macroscope may not be ones our brains will have learned to interpret. As we strive to see in these new ways, we should remember that forming the images is only part of the job. Understanding them will be a challenge.
8:47:35 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jon Udell.
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