[topicmapmail] Topic map visualization (was: Representing a person's world view as a topic map)

[Denver Gingerich]

(Note: I am replying to a message I received off-list.  The author has
approved the posting of his message to the list.)

I do appreciate services like Fuzzzy.com that use topic maps to
organize information.  However, I find such organization difficult to
follow if it is represented by lists or other purely text-based
mechanisms.

What I'm really looking for is something like CNET's Big Picture,
which they used on their news.com site for a while.  Although CNET has
discontinued the feature, you can read about it and see static images
of it on several blogs [1] [2] [3].  I think this sort of
visualization is where topic maps should go if they're going to
influence the average user.

CNET's Big Picture was based on technology licensed from LivePlasma
(http://www.liveplasma.com/).  LivePlasma uses the technology to
display and link music artists as well as movies and directors.  Using
LivePlasma should give you an idea of how CNET's Big Picture worked.

Another visualization can be seen at Thinkmap Virtual Thesaurus
(http://www.visualthesaurus.com/).  It shows words on a visual topic
map similar to CNET's Big Picture.  I'm not sure what they're using
under the covers; it would be interesting to find out.

One of the blog posts mentioned earlier suggests using prefuse
(http://prefuse.org/) to do these sorts of visualizations.  I haven't
looked into it a look, but it looks like it might work, although I'm
not sure if it will allow for the kind of interactivity that Virtual
Thesaurus and CNET's Big Picture have.

Does anyone know of similar software, preferably open source, that
will create interactive visualizations of topic maps for use on web
sites?  Ideally I'd also like software that creates a topic map given
a set of URLs (bookmarks) with only minimal user intervention to help
it link together the topics expressed in the web pages.  But that
seems like software that would be much harder to write.

Denver


1. http://incsub.org/soulsoup/?p=565
2. http://feedblog.org/2005/10/02/cnets-big-picture-graph-visualization/
3. http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.php?p=322


On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Roy Lachica <roy at hyposoft.no> wrote:
> Hi Denver
>  I just came by an old mailing list posting by you and I'm sending you a
>  reply in case it is still of relevance to you.
>
>  Your problem is central to what I have been working on lately. Namely how to
>  create a Topic Map for tagging Internet resources. You write about using
>  Topic Maps to store your private world view. Fuzzzy.com is an online
>  bookmarking system built on Topic Maps where users collaborate on a shared
>  'world view'. A shared consensus Topic Map in contrast to a personal one
>  with a personal vocabulary will enable communication and knowledge sharing.
>  On Fuzzzy tags are semantic, organic and evolving based on democratic user
>  involvement. I hope the system (that I have developed) is relevant for you
>  and that you would like to try it out.
>
>  Best regards
>  Roy Lachica
>
>
>
>
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: topicmapmail-bounces at infoloom.com [mailto:topicmapmail-
>  > bounces at infoloom.com] On Behalf Of Denver Gingerich
>  > Sent: 23. september 2007 03:19
>  > To: topicmapmail at infoloom.com
>  > Subject: [topicmapmail] Representing a person's world view as a topic map
>  >
>  > As I write articles on my blog to express my views, I am constantly
>  > reminded of the inadequacy of static articles to show relations
>  > between different concepts.  Tagging articles can help, but it
>  > requires the author to be very diligent in selecting the correct tags
>  > and tagging previous articles as new tags are added.  Since each of
>  > the blog articles are essentially a piece of my world view and they
>  > are often quite interconnected, it would seem to make sense to arrange
>  > my ideas in a topic map instead of a list of articles (not that I
>  > would never write articles; they would be linked from the topic map).
>  > By doing this, I would allow people to see how different topics are
>  > linked in my head and how I arrived at certain conclusions (by
>  > analyzing the sequence of topics leading up to a particular
>  > assertion).  It also allows me to create an increasingly complete
>  > representation of my world view over time as I see new links in my
>  > thinking that aren't represented in the topic map.
>  >
>  > Has anyone attempted to use topic maps to represent their world view
>  > before?  If so, what sorts of tools have you used?  Are there
>  > particular things to watch out for?
>  >
>  > A large part of what guides my thoughts are articles that I read in my
>  > daily perusal of various news sites.  As a result, it would be very
>  > nice if I could quickly add a URL to my world view topic map when I
>  > see something that is relevant to how I think.  The key here is
>  > "quickly"; if I have to edit an XML file by hand, it is unlikely that
>  > I will add a lot of these links to my topic map.  Ideally, I would be
>  > able to login to my web server and use some sort of GUI tool (maybe a
>  > Java applet) to add the URL with links (edges in the map) to the
>  > relevant topics.  What tools would you recommend for doing this?
>  >
>  > Denver