Blogging Spree: Trends in Information Visualization

In how many ways are blogs analyzed? Answer to this is very hard to find.

In the following are few samples that facilitate understanding trends in blogging[i.e., how blogging is gaining acceptance, addiction, attention, etc.]

1. Linkology, By Stuart Luman

There are upwards of 27 million blogs in the world. To discover how they relate to one another, we’ve taken the most-linked-to 50 and mapped their connections. Each arrow represents a hypertext link that was made sometime in the past 90 days. Think of those links as votes in an endless global popularity poll. Many blogs vote for each other: “blogrolling.” Some top-50 sites don’t have any links from the others shown here, usually because they are big in Japan, China, or Europe—regions still new to the phenomenon.

2. Data Mining - A World United by Cartoons:

Here's what DataSphere looks like highlighting the locations which have news articles about (islamic) cartoons [around 10pm on the 15th of Feb]

3. The Virtual Handshake Blog 2/13/2006, Haves and the Have-Nots of the blogosphere,
Posted in Social Network Research, Blogging
by David Teten @ 10:19 am —

4. A Model for Weblog Research
Given that weblogs are now becoming an object of research for social and computer scientists alike, it is perhaps an idea to look for a model (I hate the word).
One model element some think is important is size. The Weblogging Ecosystem workshop (Edinburgh 2006) is running a data challenge:

Much of the interest in research relating to weblogs involves the analysis of large quantities of data. As part of this workshop, we are very excited to provide a data set to the research community. The aim is to encourage the use of this data to focus the various views and analyses of the blogosphere over a common space...

See also:
~~~~metamanda>>weblog information visualization Archives

~~~~Top 50 blogs ranked by Time Magazine in 2005.

~~~~Dissecting Technorati Top 100 and Blog Ranking Algorithms (Promotion)

~~~~Feedster Top 500 - Search Engine Blogs

~~~~[pdf]A study of Blog Search, Gilad Mishne Maarten de Rijke 28th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR'06) 2006

Information Visualization at Eurekster, a Swicki search engine

I am happy to have found a dynamic visual search engine:

Eurekster, a Swicki search engine. Click and view a sample: Information Visualization blogsphere.

Courtesy: Bringing You A "Library 2.0" Perspective, by Michael Casey

I quote from Michael's LibraryCrunch:

What’s a swicki? According to Eurekster, a swicki is a search engine that takes results from a relevant community – your community – and in the process improves the relevancy of results. Along the way it also creates a tag cloud (they call it a “dynamic buzzcloud”) that reflects recent searches. Here's how Eurekster describes it:

Joining the personal Web publishing phenomenon on blogs, podcasts, wikis and websites is the swicki - a next-generation search engine that gives personal and small-business Web publishers the power to design and deliver results tailored to their community's specific interests. A blend between a search engine and a wiki

A word from other crunchers and watchers about this search engine:

~~~~~Thus spake The TechCrunch:

With Swickis, they’ve taken the basic technology and added on a “do it yourself” interface to allow a much larger number of sites, particularly blogs, to also integrate search direclty into their content. Continue...

~~~~~And so said Solution Watch:

First, I love the fact that this is a free service and will also allow users to earn a commission from sponsored results. I also like how you can take your search engine and very easily include it into your website. However, I do feel that the customization is a little limited. The style of my search on the right is not the default style. I actually had to do some tweaking around with CSS to get the search field to fit correctly and I also adjusted some of the coloring that isn’t available. It would be nice to do all of this within the control panel, but if not, tweaking the CSS on my site seemed to do the trick just fine. Another feature that I feel would be great to allow customization to are the search results them selves. Nothing drastic, but maybe allow us to change the font, background color, and possibly even a logo. When I make a search, it makes me feel that I have completely left my site and there is no coming back (unless I use the back button, of course). Now, about the buzz clouds. I like the buzz clouds and I like how terms get added to it as searches are made. This allows me to see activity from my visitors and also I like how I can easily remove keywords from the buzz cloud when logged in by clicking on the “x” next to them. But, one thing that I am curious about is to why we can’t get these buzz clouds on the main search page that include terms from users on the buzz clouds on our sites. continue...

~~~~More reviews on Swicki are at Susan Mernit's Blog.

Books and senses - visualization conceptualized again

[The following article is an excellent voice and simply promotes the conceptual framework of my blogsphere. Thank you Jacek]

Books and senses by Jacek Czarnik
Some time ago, I was glancing through the manuscripts written by Ignacy Krasicki. They contained fragments of poems, first drafts of fairy tales, and other notes. I new most of them, therefore I concentrated on the quality of handwriting of this ancient poet. It was an experience, interesting, even emotional. However, the strongest experience came from the touch. I could grasp with my fingers the same pages that he touched. Only this surrogate contact - in spite of two hundred years separating us - evoked in me an emotional shudder.

Touch is a sense of fulfilment, without it, belief is difficult, love is handicapped, and knowledge is incomplete. Books have to be touched. They are meant for the hand as well as eyes and mind. Complete contact with them occurs only when one feels their weight, smoothness or roughness of the binding, elasticity or softness of paper. It is difficult to content oneself with just looking at them through the window of a bookshop or contemplate, enclosed in a bookcase, however masterfully conceived, title printed on the back of a book.

There are not many forms of art in which an artist can consider the effect of his creation on the sense of touch. Writers are fortunate to have at their disposal many possibilities. A book stimulates almost all senses. The eye can behold the beauty of illustrations and decorations. The nose is enticed by the aroma of printers ink. The rustle of foil covering graphic reproductions intrigues the ear, and the whisper of turning pages calms the mind. The experiences connected with taste can, in truth, be only accessed through one's imagination, stimulated by the content of the book. At times, the world conjured by text replaces reality. The forces of imagination cannot be underestimated.

The foremost impression associated with a book is visual. Multiplicity of elements forming the material entity of written and graphic media enforces the necessity of creating a unique "architecture" of printed text format and book, as a whole. This task demands a degree of talent, taste, courage, and thorough specialist knowledge.

Keep reading

Source: Contemporary book art - EBIB No.10/2002

Semantic Interoperability and 90 - 10 or 80 - 20 factor

Blogspheres are loaded with a new found happiness and quickly circulating these magic numbers: the 90-10 "law."

What is this law?:    "10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react."
Read more at:90/10 law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia    or Google
See also:
>>A New Twist on the 90/10 Rule

>>The 90/10 principle originally
>>Google for whatever thy name: laws, rules, principles - 90 /10
written by 'STEVEN COVEY'

This traffic-of-ideas led me to look for somthing that works in the field of library and information profession.

Let me add on, the information profession has lived for decades with the 80-20 law -i.e., The Bradford's Law of Scatter.
>>80 For 20:
>>Optimize Magazine Research Library: 80-20 Software Inc

Modern cliche about getting 80% of the content for 20% of the effort. Also known as "the Pareto Principle".
Benjamin Geiger: This is much more widely found than it may appear.
Software engineers know it as "20% of the code leads to 80% of the effort/bugs". Retailers know it as "20% of customers generate 80% of sales" or "80% of merchandise comes from 20% of vendors". I guess that go players might agree that 80% of thickness or territory comes from 20% of the moves...

So number game is not new. And for a bibliometrician, a cybermetrician or a Webmetrician, or an infometrician this is more routine. [Let me hasten to add that some called this field as parametric - So whats in a name, said Shakespeare.]

What is semnatics doing here? It is all-a-do-about statistics, as the above numbers relate! One clue about such a semantic relates to meaning. See also: Statistical semantics: Analysis of the potential performance of key-word information systems by G.W. Furnas, et. al. The Bell System Technical Journal, v.62(6) July-August 1983

In my blog, I use the term semantic interoperability or infostructure, as a facilitator that helps in connecting different ideas, thoughts, facts, figures, etc. Those who use this technical term, do give a specific meaning. And I quote:

Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments

SIMILE is a joint project conducted by the W3C, MIT Libraries, and MIT CSAIL. SIMILE seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, metadata, and services. A key challenge is that the collections which must inter-operate are often distributed across individual, community, and institutional stores. We seek to be able to provide end-user services by drawing upon the assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, and metadata held in such stores. Read more

What brings me to this interoperability is I am reviewing a book: Adaptive Information : Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration (Wiley Series in Systems Engineering and Management), by Jeffrey T. Pollock, Ralph Hodgson


see also
The Semantic web’s place on the Hype Cycle, By Tim Finin on Thursday, August 25th, 2005

Did you know you are a Googlewhack? - Keyword Visualization

Did you know you are a Googlewhack? Thus spake Gary Clark.

I wish to share an e-mail from Gary -- and it is all-a-do-about Googlewhacking: The Search for The One True Googlewhack.

Dr. Taher,
I was playing a word game on the internet and came across your web page. I was looking for a googlewhack - a game in which you enter two unrelated words into the internet search engine Google, trying to get only one result. Your page is a googlewhack - the only page out of over 4,000,000,000 that Google searches that contains the words "bibliophilism" and "holistic."

I just wanted to let you know!

Cheers,
Gary Clark
Washington, DC

Thank you Gary for this message. By the way, Gary, figures always lie. So pl. don't consider me by the numbers. I am a human being as well a lilliput in the Gulliver's land.

Guided Imagery / Visualization - Uses with the Cancer Patron

By Cheryl Warren, M.S.L.S., ValleyCare Health Library, Pleasanton, CA
Guided imagery or visualization is a technique that uses the imagination to create vivid images that the body can perceive and respond to. Often described as focused day-dreaming, visualization is considered a complementary therapy that works well with traditional treatments. Guided imagery can ease stress, anxiety, enhance personal awareness, and improve psychological coping skills. Because visual imagery has numerous aspects and various components as well as techniques in application, the definitions can vary in meaning from practitioner to practitioner. Continued ...

Contents Include: Web Sites, Literature Search: Guided Imagery / Visualization and Cancer, Collection Development: Guided Imagery / Visualization (Books, Audio-visuals)

Excerpted from Cancer Librarians Section Newsletter, Spring 1999, Updated 2002 [Web site Last modified: 01-April-2003]
About Cheryl Warren who is now at: Las Positas College 3033 Collier Canyon Road Livermore, CA

Information Visualization at Wikipedia - Blogspheres Perspectives

The current version of history flow visualizes the evolution of pages from WikiPedia: a growing online free encyclopedia being created by people all over the world who come to the site and contribute to its contents. To find out more about WikiPedia see their page describing its essential characteristics.

A question that frequently comes to mind is about what is the relationship between different online tools, eg., Blogs and Wikipedia:
a. how important is Information Visualization for the world in general, as presented in Wikipedia and

b. what is the role of Blogs in creating, synthesizing and disseminating this knowledge about information visualization?

An answer to this is, probably, visible in the traffic that moved between this blog and Wikipedia. Simply stated, this traffic was very significant.

Another answer may be in the point that Blogs continuously review and update the coverage of Wikipedia.

The following blogs have significant info on this traffic of ideas:

..Visualization, Intelligence and the Starlight project

..Visualizations from a social point of view

..Information Visualization is useful to represent unfamiliar information

..chimerically: Martin Wattenberg

..The-Fallout-over-Wikiganda

..WIKIS, BLOGS AND RSS FOR OPERATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

Interesting extrapolation:
"Collaborative knowledge diffusion through dynamic link creation / link sharing on the Web, as connective collective intelligence [wikis and blogs are examples of intriguing web tools for knowledge diffusion and collective intelligence], Lennart Björneborn, Ph.D.

More at Google on this relationship of blogs and Wikipedia.

Do you agree that blogs contribute to this knowledge-base, and thereby directly add value to Wikipedia?

See also:
~~~~Wikipedia and Britannica - The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man) by Paula Berinstein | Consultant, Berinstein Research, March 6, 2006

Wikipedia’s slogan is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." As librarian K. G. Schneider points out in her blog, Free Range Librarian [http://freerangelibrarian.com/archives/052905/wikipedia.php], this description is aimed at Wikipedia’s content providers and maintainers, not its readers. In his first law, "Books are for use," library theoretician Ranganathan meant that "information does not exist to please and amuse its creators or curators," explains Schneider. "As a common good, information can only be assessed in context of the needs of its users."
Who exactly are the users of both Britannica and Wikipedia?
Britannica’s Panelas says, "Our customers tend to be knowledge and information seekers, a broad group consisting of students, professionals, and lifelong learners. They tend to be better educated than the population as a whole, or they aspire to be. Beyond that they share few demographic characteristics."
Wikipedia’s users are potentially everyone under the sun. Because it has versions in about 200 languages, its reach is potentially far greater than that of Britannica. Britannica offers only an English-language version, although the company does produce other works in other languages.
So not only do the characteristics of Wikipedia’s and Britannica’s contributors differ, so do their audiences. Wikipedia’s audience is far more general than that of Britannica, which implies that its mission and scope must be so as well.

~~~~Wikipedia, Free Range Librarian
K.G. Schneider: Techno-Librarian. Writer. Gadfly. Commentator-at-Large

Information professionals must read this: Blogs and wikis could blow the gaffe on you, by Tebbutt, David. Information World Review; Dec2005 Issue 219, p19-19, 1/2p, 1c. David Tebbutt, Columnist and Writer for Information World Review, UK

Information Visualization @ fliker from Lei Cui's photostream

Disclaimer: Blogsphere a blogging tool is not to be confused by the term used in the above discussion.