Ever try to find that elusive word or concept that you know for sure is hiding somewhere in your brain but stubbornly refuses to be found? This happens to me repeatedly when I'm trying to write anything (and especially if I'm trying to be witty).
I've stumbled on a very clever tool for helping to find in the quickest way possible that elusive word fugitive. It's a program called Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus and it uses a kind of interactive mapping application to generate word associations visually. I find it much more helpful than the traditional linear, step-by step process typical of most thesauruses. And it corresponds nicely with the Head First emphasis on showing words and concepts visually in order to "see" (even atypical) relationships.
The application requires Java to run (free download is available) and the online version is about $20/year for subscription. And if you're not sure, you can run a free trial test to find out. But for those of us who are much more "visual" in the way we come up with ideas this is a great alternative to most other cumbersome print and online options.
And if anyone else stumbles on clever apps that help the "visual" learner we'd love to hear about it!
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1. Chernoff Faces
This is the most interesting idea about information visualization I know. I blogged about it a bit here:
2. Tom Van Vleck's Memory Box
A personal history represented as a shelf with lots of stuff on it.
You can click on each item and read a story behind it. An intelligent and creative way to organize your junk. :-)
3. Non-Geographical Map
Shows a world map based not on the "formal" distance, but on how long it would take you to get there. Click on a city. I suspect the thing is mostly a joke yet, because for Irkutsk it said: "optional horseback ride through frozen Tundra", well, I don't think so. :-) But the idea is wonderful.
4. weblog visualisations
5. Here it is, for Pinker's "The Language Instinct"
-- 100 most frequently used words in the book represented tag-cloud-like. Useful, if you have no idea what a book is about. :-)
6. Literature Map
Enter a writer's name and see what other authors you will love.
(continued)
7. News map
Shows which stories (nationwide and sectionwide) got more press coverage.
8. The Baby Name Voyager
"which gives you a wonderful ethnohistoric picture of the United States through trends in baby names"
9. AmazType
… you can see the word of your choice spelled out in letters made up of thumbnails of the publications whose titles contain it. (You can also ask to collect the works by authors rather than titles, or use thumbnails from the covers of music CDs or video/DVDs rather than
books.)
10. Score Bard's periodic table of the blogs.
11. Paul Goyette's Chicago blogmap:
Chicago blogs ployed on the subway map.
12. The WeatherPixie
"The WeatherPixie is a little graphic that shows a representation of the weather using data reported (mostly) by airports and aerodromes around the world.
As the weather in a particular location changes, the characters clothes will reflect the weather and the graphic will show rain, snow, airborne particles and changes in cloud cover. Daylight, sunset and current moon phase are also displayed."
More links
1. Check Valdis E. Krebs's articles on social networks here: http://www.orgnet.com/booknet.html
2. Statistics on suicides on the Golden Gate bridge: http://radio.javaranch.com/map/images/suicide.gif