Composing Spaces

ReadWriteWeb recently had two posts on information visualization. Marshall Kirkpatrick addresses the question of information overload by looking at how new visualization media are adapting from gaming interfaces. Sarah Perez lists The Best Tools for for Visualization by breaking the tools into several categories: Visualize Social Networks, Visualize Music, Visualize the Internet, among others. The number of tools, applications, and plugins that are now available, combined with the increasing importance of being able to become critical readers and composers of visual information, suggests that we are going to start to seriously rethink (more than we have already) the place of information visualization in our curricula and its placement in composition as a whole.

(I will soon be making an argument to my department that the course that I (and a few others) teach, Writing, Research, and Technology, needs to be transformed from one in which students consider visual rhetoric and compose multimodal essays (at least in my sections, I’m not sure what happens in others—another issue to be addressed), into one dedicated to a critical understanding of information visualization. I’m still not sure the kinds of assignments that I would like to see or the applications considered, but I would like students to compose Adobe Flex applications that interact with XML data and/or engage with mapping in Google Earth, and/or one of the many useful APIs, and so forth. One question, among many, is how to ensure that such a course coevolves with current visualization technologies. Perhaps what we really need is an information visualization certificate where students take classes ranging from visual rhetoric to mapping and cartography to composing their own apps. Lots to think about.)

In a comment to Sarah Perez’ post, a reader pointed to Twingly’s screensaver: “Our screensaver is a visualization of the real time web… more precise a visualization over the blogosphere, real time, as a world globe.” The creators see this application as an evolution of the RSS Reader: “Forget RSS readers where you see only what you’re interested in. With Twingly screensaver you get a 24/7 stream of all (viewer discretion advised) blog activity, straight to your screen.” The installation is quite simple and can be run as a stand-along application as well as a screen saver. They include this video (there is no sound):

The Twingly screensaver compliments Jonathan Harris’ work (which I posted about below) but unlike Harris, whose applications segment out information based on preset conditions that often give an artificial sense of wholeness (for example, “We Feel Fine” only includes passages from blogs posted in English and therefore, despite his earnest ideals, only maps the “human emotion” of the English-speaking world), Twingly presents all posts in multiple languages from across the planet. As a result, we get a more authentic (re)presentation of the dissemination of the ideas of those on the planet who have a blog and care to share them.

My graduate course, Writing for Electronic Communities is currently working its way through Richard Landow’s tome, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. This is my first time making my way through the third edition (published in 2006). Though it is always nice to go back and visit Storyspace again, I pleased to see Landow discussing some newer, fascinating, and ultimately useful applications. The first of those applications is the TouchGraph Google Browser, which according to TouchGraph’s web site "reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google’s database of related sites." In short, you enter a search string and, using a Java applet, the application maps related sites in clusters colored by site similarity. Here is the map of the string "Web 2.0":

You can learn about the web site represented by a particular sphere by clicking on it; information will appear in the upper-left box. Right click on a sphere to open the web site in a new tab.

One of the URLs I happened to open was to a wonderfully useful site I hadn’t heard of: Go2Web2.0. It is essentially as advertised: The Complete Web 2.0 Directory. Web 2.0 applications are listed by logo (which makes it a bit image heavy) and can be sorted according to preset tags. The range of applications is spectacular—and makes me wonder when we are going to reach the point of too much redundancy:

The March 2008 edition of Harper’s arrived today, and in it is a wonderful example of how internet technologies are not value neutral. Ginger Strand’s annotation "Keyword: Evil" (which Harper’s has made available for free online) spans two pages as she uses call-outs connected to an architectural schematic to dissect the energy-use implications of Google’s planned server farm site, The Dallas, which rests on the Columbia River in Oregon. Two screenshots of the article:

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The goal of Pangea Day is to unite the world through the visual power of short films. Submit your own by 15 Feb 2008 at http://www.pangeaday.org/.

Netvibes, the RSS reader and information ecosystem that I have been using with my students has previewed ginger (to be released in January 2008), which has the much needed feature of social networking (which I hope will allow users to share ecosystems).

Saw this as I was booking a flight this morning. Orbitz and Carbonfund have partnered to provide travelers with an easy to use widget to offset the carbon generated by their national and international flights:

Looks like the offset option is only available when booking a flight. I suspect that it wouldn’t been too difficult for Orbitz and Carbonfund to figure out a way to provide the service for customers who book hotels, rental cars, and cruises, as well. According to the list of partners, Orbitz is the only major travel site to partner with Carbonfund.

Via Geoff Carter on the techrhet list, Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose talking about the Kindle:

The device is getting the full media blitz, most notably the cover story in Newsweek, claiming that it is The Future of Reading and that the Book Isn’t Dead. I wasn’t aware that the book was in critical care.I haven’t used the Kindle yet, though I would obviously like to get my hands on one and see what its all about. I had the same initial reaction as Clay—that the lack of unlimited internet access is a serious drawback. Clay likes to check blogs in his phone; I like to do the same through my RSS reader.At Thanksgiving the family got into a discussion about the Kindle and I opined that I thought it would be another neat toy that some readers buy, just as some people bought the Sony Reader—the technology from which the Kindle heavily borrows (especially the liquid text screen). The only reason the Kindle is getting such buzz, I suspect, is because it is Bezos. But, we shall see.

Update 11/24, 9:27pm: Wired has a table that compares 8 categories among 9 ebook readers.

Update 12/2/07, 11:13am: I can’t resist pointing to Chip Kidd’s response to the Kindle at A Brief Message:

On Monday November 19th, Amazon released something called Kindle, the latest “e-book” reading device. I’ve been asked to comment on what effect I think this will have, if any, on book design as we know it. Here goes.

None.

Sincerely,
Chip Kidd

Via Common Craft, WetPaint has created a series of video parodies to advertise their easy to use wiki service. WetPaint uses a WYSiWYG for editing, which seems to be less awkward than the one now being used by PBwiki. It also offers users unlimited memory, though there is a limit to the number and size of uploaded files. Common Craft, the creators of the Plain English series, has partnered with WetPaint and has created a video highlighting its fearures.

A sampling of their parodies:

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The graphics in the new HP commercial featuring Jerry Seinfeld are incredible.

They beat out Google, pay $240 million for a 1.6% share.