Comments on: Watch What I Watch

By: Rahul Nair

Rahul Nair — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:38:06 +0000

And the damn comment validator ate my halo smiley emoticon

By: Rahul Nair

Rahul Nair — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:37:05 +0000

‘Nice new style’ and ‘iphone optimized’? Looks like the hipster design mindset is alive and well with at least one author

I on the other hand am an engineer and believe in form AFTER function

By: ayman

ayman — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:37:43 +0000

Installed. I would rather you say ‘Nice new style’ or ‘cool your site is iphone optimized’ but no…just ‘install this!’

By: Rahul Nair

Rahul Nair — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:23:51 +0000

Personally the superbowl tweet visualization really gave me a good idea of the ebb and flow of the game. It was kind of like sitting in the back of a bar and seeing different groups of fans yell and scream when the teams score/screw up. A difference map would have been nice but I think the current viz does a decent enough job as is.

P.S.: You guys really need to install the Subscribe to comments plugin (http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/) or you will have a hard time getting into a real discussion with your commenters.

By: ayman

ayman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:45:42 +0000

Funny – I always assumed it was more ‘map’ than ‘cloud’ and/or that TagMap and WorldExplorr was the same thing. Anyhow, the deeper semantic labels will always be the cooler part to me.

By: naaman

naaman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:46:19 +0000

A “tag cloud viz on a geo layout” is exactly what we called “Tag Maps”, and the only place I know of that had them before us was Stanley Milgram’s work on “cognitive maps of Paris”. Our idea of putting tag clouds on the map propagated to Flickr, and now the Times…

“World Explorer” is what we called the Flickr-based system that used the Tag Maps viz; we kept the distinction mostly in our heads

And, yes, they added a timeline, and forgot to extract the terms in a more interesting way (e.g., difference map). All we’re left with is the fact that the state of Arizona just talked about the Cardinals!

By: ayman

ayman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:55:58 +0000

the superbowl viz isnt really a 'tag map'. however, it is using a tag cloud like representation in a geo layout. what made tagmaps interesting (as i saw it) is the indirection (from photo to tag to geo to represent a summary of a localized area). the thing that left me high and dry about the super bowl viz (and how it represented soliloquy conversation against an event timeline) is a general lack of insights it leaves the viewer with save the moment the whole USA shouted the Boss's name. But were they happy or angry about the show? Hey NYTimes: I told you I want to see difference maps!

By: naaman

naaman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:15:43 +0000

Yes, #current-Twitter was nice but the CNN-Facebook inaugural address was a game changer, no doubt. In the future, it will be marked as the moment that TV watching had changed forever (with all due respect to early researchers, and respect is due…).

Speaking of early research, Rahul, I am going to risk it and say that we can take credit for the Tweetmap. When I presented at the Times last year, they were very impressed with our TagMaps / World Explorer (demo still alive!). One of the Times designers said to me, after the talk, that I can expect to see them use a TagMap soon… so there you go.

By: Rahul Nair

Rahul Nair — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:28:35 +0000

Check out the tweetmap of the Superbowl: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/sports/20090202_superbowl_twitter.html