Gephi, graph exploration and manipulation software. Social Graphs of On-line Communities and Social Networking Sites. By Valdis Krebs We all live in multiple on-line communities. What do these communities look like? Where are we located in each of our communities, and what role do we play? The diagram below shows an actual on-line community [OLC]. Every node in the network represents a person. A link between two nodes reveals a relationship or connection between two people in the community -- the social network. Most on-line communities consist of three social rings -- a densely connected core in the center, loosely connected fragments in the second ring, and an outer ring of disconnected nodes, commonly known as lurkers.
In the above diagram, we see three distinct types of membership in our community -- designated by blue, green and red nodes. The outer orbit in the network above contains the blue nodes. The green nodes have a few connections -- usually with prior acquaintances. The inner core of the community is composed of red nodes [zoomed-in view below]. Visualization API - Google Code. Tianamo ... web discovery. Information aesthetics - data visualization & visual design. Eric Blue's Blog: Dataesthetics: The Power and Beauty of Da. One of my areas of interest that has grown over the last couple years has been data visualization. I’m a visually-oriented learner, and I look forward to seeing any techniques, illustrations, or technologies that: 1) Allow people to assimilate information as fast as possible. 2) Deepen understanding of knowledge by visually illustrating data in new and interesting ways.
There is nothing like having an intellectual epiphony after looking at a picture for a few seconds (pictures can definitely be worth a thousand words). 3) Present information in an aesthetically pleasing way. Or, in extreme examples, inspire a sense of awe! Thanks in large part to del.icio.us, I’ve come across a wide assortment of sites and blogs that really illustrate some amazing work in this area. While cleaning up my knowledge management related bookmarks, I started to revisit many of the sites I’ve tagged in recent months. I thought I’d share some of the illustrations that really stuck out at me. Data Visualization Google Gadgets. Last year, Google acquired a data visualization technology from Gapminder, a Swedish non-profit organization. Gapminder's technology, Trendalyzer, was used to visualize data from United Nations Common Database in an intuitive way. To quote from Gapminder's site, "this software unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics.
" For example, you could see the evolution of carbon dioxide emissions in a country over time or find correlations between CO2 emissions and the income per capita. Google probably intends to use this technology to visualize custom data. This is not the only data visualization gadget developed. Hopefully we'll be able to actually use these gadgets and Google will create a service around visualizing data. Update: The gadgets are a part of a new Google Spreadsheets feature. Graphwise.