Visualizing the Web
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Visualizing the Web |
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Next generation browser interfaces for 3D-enabled Web navigation.
I just finished yet another search session on the Web, and it is time to filter
and store the retrieved information. I regularly use a lot of neat utilities
and search agents, but at the end it all boils down to the good old browser
interface. Unfortunately, my taskbar is so filled with multiple browser instances
- some 10-15 of them right now - that it becomes almost impossible to quickly
and efficiently browse through that huge pile of multimedia information. "Two-dimensional"
HTML is severely limited in displaying a huge amount of information. Human brain
has much larger "bandwidth" and can perceive information more efficiently
by encoding it in various colors, shapes, positions, etc. Looks like a great
task for virtual reality or some other visualization technique: with a little
touch of AI-related technologies the life of every Web surfer can instantly
become much easier. So, this time I'll point out to the newest software packages
for Web visualization and 3D enabled browsing. Each of them offers a unique
solution to the problem of clumsy and complicated navigation in cluttered 3D
spaces while introducing other advanced search operations.
miner3D
Slovakian company Dimension 5 recently
released miner3D, a browser plugin with
a new user interface for displaying search engine results. It downloads data
directly from the search engine you select - Google, AltaVista, HotBot, NorthernLight,
etc. Data is visualized as boxes arranged over the resulting information space.
Texts, colors and positions convey the key information, while the detailed information
is available on mouse click and is provided in a pop-up window. Simple mouse
movements enable faster and easier navigation over the large number of results
(several hundred) and the navigation is much more effective than in the usual
search engine that can display only tens of hits at the time. The plugin also
offers advanced operations: deleting useless results, copying and pasting of
selected hits, creating search reports and saving search results for future
use. The software can be easily hooked up to any database providing data through
Web browser - search engines, media servers, corporate intranets, but for now
it only works in MS Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. The server support is provided
through a set of server scripts written in PERL or other scripting language
of your choice.
The company also produces data mining and data visualization software and work
on other related projects. MS Excel and Access users can try several low-cost,
immersive solutions for data
mining, visual querying and navigation. I use miner3D regularly for overseeing
Web searches that return a large number of results.
CubicEye
Pennsylvania-based 2ce, Inc. just unveiled
CubicEye, a 3D browser aimed at more efficient and intuitive interaction with
the Web resources. It introduces their Salvo Navigation technology that
allows users to send and receive requests to multiple Web pages at once. These
pages are then rendered using a cube (or room) metaphor, placing a page on each
surface. Each surface has five additional sides, and cube rotation and selection
are controlled with a NavWheel, another GUI innovation. The issue of
disorientation in 3D virtual environments that doomed previous similar attempts
is solved by limiting navigation to 90-degree rotation, an organizing principle
that can be easily accustomed to. The whole experience can be characterized
as cool and innovative, although I saw people that doesn't think of it as particularly
intuitive. I think it can enhance productivity and free the taskbar, but only
for the experienced user. System requirements are rather hefty - P III, 128
MB RAM, Windows 2000, a 3D card with 16 MB of memory and Internet Explorer 5.5.
2Ce plans to extend the CubicEye to the operating system, allowing users to
open multiple applications as faces of the cube.
antarcti.ca
Antarcti.ca Systems Inc., was was founded
in 1999 by XML co-inventor Tim Bray to help people visualize network information
in familiar terms, such as landscapes and maps. Their Visual Net software
is designed to adapt to a broad range of networked information, making it ideal
for enterprise sites containing enormous amounts of information. At the heart
of the software is the Visual Net Engine, which plots and diagrams each piece
of data to create the layout that forms the map. The product showcase, Map.net,
applies Visual Net to the Open Directory Project, mapping "the entire Internet
on a map of Antarctica".