Posts Tagged ‘timeline’
accessing a world of knowledge
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
For many people understanding facts is easy, but connecting the information to other information in our brains, and connecting them to a certain place on a map and a specific time in relation to other milestones is where we gain the true value of knowledge.
Creating a visual and interactive method of engaging with a world of information is a daunting task but with advancements in user interface and tagging we at incubaker think we are not far off. We have come up with a concept that could be as engaging and educational for a 8 year old as it would for an 18 or even 80 year old. It is bit hard to describe so bare with me…
The idea: Imagine a globe (similar to the Google Earth desktop application) with a multi-point timeline below it (similar to the kind seen on Google finance), and on the side, there are a few core categories; ‘Arts & Culture’, ‘Politics’, ‘Religion’ etc… There is also a search bar on the top of the page (see Figure above for sketch). This gives us a three dimensional axis on which to represent data; geographical, chronological and qualitative.
Putting all technical steps aside (we will get to that later), lets understand how the site would interact with the user. Lets search for: ice cream.
Example: I type in ice cream in the search bar with all categories selected. The earth spins backwards as it loads the information representing its search back in time. It begins with the first instance of ice cream, Faloodeh. A mixture of iced rosewater and vermicelli, with added flavors of saffron and other fruit/flower flavors created in ancient Persia circa 400 BC. I see a small marker on my globe in Persia depicting the location of origin. I can now narrow my time line view to the time of 400 BC, or expand it to modern day. As I expand my graph I see Markers pop up all over the globe representing advancements in the evolution of ice cream. For example a marker in Delhi where they began making sorbets in the 16th century. Now that we have the information lets bring it to life.
I select the beginning of time on my time line, and I select all categories and I click “Play” on my search for ‘Ice cream’. The glob shows me the marker in Persia with a caption for Faloodeh, with a trail that takes me to Delhi with a caption for Sorbet, and the trail continues until I get to modern day ice cream, and the multiple flavors of Ben & Jerry’s.
Technical Details: Now that you have heard the concept, lets dive into some technical details. I am not a programmer, but from what I understand, this concept only really requires a powerful semantic search that is able to break down sentences and tag the information (geo tags, time tags, and content tags). Despite how some feel about the information on sites like wikipedia, I am a strong supporter of community created content. With the vast amount of information available, a great first step would be to tag all wikipedia content. This new concept would serve only as an advanced and more visual/interactive interface for wikipedia.
Other Uses and Applications: As I discussed this concept with Flavio and Fabian, we found that this same concept would work great for breaking news stories. As news broke across the globe you could see the globe spin and a news caption pop-up based on a certain keyword or category selection.
I think this would make a great open source project, and I would love feedback or a collaboration team so leave a comment or send a mail if your interested!
