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

[Borislav Iordanov]

Hi there,

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hypergraph works out of the box with Java
TMAPI. I'm using it in a project, an applet that works similarly to
visualthesaurus by letting you navigating through a web portal's topic
space. That's going to go live hopefully in the next couple of months. One
of the layouts it supports is hyperbolic trees which I find much easier to
look at then the highly connected graphs of other graph visualization
algorithms. 

Best
Boris

PS I can gladly send you my code, but with the hypergraph codebase you have
enough to get started...you have sample code etc. If Java is not your
language, then I don't know...;)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: topicmapmail-bounces at infoloom.com [mailto:topicmapmail-
> bounces at infoloom.com] On Behalf Of Denver Gingerich
> Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 10:00 AM
> To: topicmapmail at infoloom.com
> Subject: [topicmapmail] Topic map visualization (was: Representing a
> person's world view as a topic map)
> 
> (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
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