Comments on: Musing about clouds: More about Web 2.0 in the Enterprise

By: Shiva Ramani

Shiva Ramani — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:37:01 +0000

Visualisation improves context and aids comprehension – So true !!!

My focus and reaction to a problem which is visual and contextual is more holistic and global than
I wish my email application is more visual and contextual than what I have.

By: JP

JP — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 08:10:43 +0000

Thanks, Dan. I’ve done the Tufte trail as well, though I haven’t read Beautiful Evidence as yet. And I’ve taken a look at the blog you recommended, really useful. Thanks again.

By: Dan Keldsen

Dan Keldsen — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:41:53 +0000

JP – visualization CAN be useful, and it can also be a flashy waste of time. Having orbited around enterprise search companies for the last 7-8 years, if I had a dime for every time a new visual interface was trotted out, I’d be a rich man. If I had a dime for every time someone actually bought the overall package specifically because of those visualizations, I’d be deep in debt!

But, as I commented on Sam’s blog, yes, this is really a very interesting experiment, and I’d love to see it unfold over time.

BTW – some of the best writing I’ve seen on visualizations is over at the Visual Methods blog (http://visualmethods.blogspot.com/). Not associated with the blog, just a fan. And of course anyone interested in visualization (USEFUL visualization) needs to get themselves to Ed Tufte’s one-day course, and breathe in his first 3 books (I don’t have the most recent, “Beautiful Evidence”). The books are very dense – sitting in on the day course clarified quite a bit for me, although I can always use a refresher.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:48:45 +0000

Visualisation improves context and aids comprehension …. is what the serious folks say.

Or we can just say seeing makes things easier

By: Sally

Sally — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:37:59 +0000

Which, interestingly, is something I posited in the last week or so.

Maybe the time for using images, sounds is coming and the time for data and words is passing.

There is a treemapping app (http://tinyurl.com/225p3l ) which shows the sizes of files in blocks, not data

By: JP

JP — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:27:29 +0000

Dean, nice to see you here. Talking about beelines, take a look at my next post…. serendipity of a different sort

By: JP

JP — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:26:32 +0000

Hi Dawn, that’s precisely what I was thinking about. What I can learn from the vocabulary differences across these modes of communication. Not just my differences, but the differences within a given location, team, department, firm. Because there will be differences.

By: Dawn Foster

Dawn Foster — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:20:02 +0000

Hi JP :-)

I like your brainstorming about other visualizations that could be made possible in this digital world we live in. I wonder what my cloud would contain for email and how it would be different from IM?

I find it interesting when I notice how my tag clouds differ across various services. My Clearspace tag cloud within our internal Jive Clearspace instance is completely different from my tag clouds on the developer communities and on my Fast Wonder blog.

You would get a very different picture of “me” depending on the specific cloud used. I wonder whether other people see vast differences in their tag clouds across applications?

By: Dean Landsman

Dean Landsman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:09:16 +0000

Both Sides Now & Car on A Hill are two songs I listen to a great deal. They are the musical equivalent of Grand Slams. Surely you’ve head Herbie Hancock’s latest release, a tribute to and interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s work. If you haven’t, make a beeline for it!