Words on sticks, and flyby navigations have never really been my thing- the metaphor is wrong for most information sets, and the interfaces that have generally been created for these things border on the the criminal (the onscreen joystick and accelerator buttons of one VRML browser I saw still makes me shudder- it was like trying to navigate riding a virtual kids tricycle). Doom demonstrated that the problem (as many people claimed at the time) was not one of using a mouse+2 buttons to navigate a 3d space with total freedom, but simply that the interfaces were lousy.
So it feels a little weird to be posting movies of people using a website here. However, it is the key idea of Upmystreet Conversations that it two axes of geography and one of time, so animations of activity developing over time is a comfortable way of conveying information about what's going on. But that doesn't mean it's a navigational metaphor.
A disclaimer first: Adam worked really hard to get this working before the deadline (My^h^h Tom's EtCon session, and so it's a very rough cut. We haven't yet been able to give it the level of Tufte care that we would like, so forgive the absence of key, title, legend, scale, and supporting information (like an outline of the UK). We're sorry. It'll be better later.
A disclaimer second: This is a 2 minute hi-res avi file screencapped (via the excellent Camtasia Studio from the OpenGL application that Adam wrote. There's some loss, and the original app is beautifully smooth.
A disclaimer third: it's a 23Mb file zipped. I'm going to hell, where I shall have all my physical senses reduced to 28.8K baud for eternity. ETCon people! can you share it locally somewhere since James pays for all the bandwidth. or dump it on your favourite peer-to-peer network.
Upmystreet_conversations.avi (23Mb zipped, I'm really sorry)
Explanation:
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In the first section, white crosses are the starts of threads, and red crosses are threads that start but never get a reply. You can see the outline of the UK slowly develop over time, and how posting density follows population density closely, with greater activity in London, the Northwest, and the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor
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The second section repeats this, but this time, the points have a 'half-life', so they fade away after time. This view gives a clearer indication of activity at any one time- it's not hard to see how bursts of activity correspond to flamewars, etc
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Detail of section 2, zoomed into the Greater London area
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In this view, rather than each post being plotted, each thread is plotted as a polyline. Each separate Conversation on the board is assigned a random colour (colour distinguishes, but doesn't convey intrinsic information). Conversations isn't threaded, so the lines don't bifurcate, but if a conversation bounces repeatedly between two users, it will be drawn more heavily
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A detail of 3 on an inner London area
And finally, I'd like to say a huge fucking-hell-you're-incredible to
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and everyone at Upmystreet
for making my stupid ideas work better than I ever could have imagined or made them. May the recruitment vultures discover this site and make you which beyond your wildest dreams.
Especially Tom.
stef