Big Picture(sm): Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web Databases The Big Picture(sm):Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web DatabasesWhere is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge that we have lost ininformation?"T.S. Eliot, The Rock (1934) pt.1PROJECTS, RESEARCH, PRODUCTS and SERVICES Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, California, USAProduct NameHotSauce (ProjectX)Contact projectx@atg.apple.com Product SummaryHotSauce "is a 3D information navigation system that allows users to effortlessly explore Internet or intranet websites and desktop content. The 3D interface greatly improves web navigation by making the structure of Webcontent immediately apparent to users."Underlying this user interface is Meta Content Format technology (MCF), "an open standard (file) format used to represent a wide range of information about content." "As HTML is to the displayed page, MCF is to structuredcontent." It describes information that can include "Web pages, gopherand ftp files, email, and structured databases, making their content available through a variety of views. MCF is both platform and applicationindependent." HotSauce is a plug-in currently available only for Macintosh and Windows 95browsers.Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://mcf.research.apple.com/hs/sites.htmlhttp://mcf.research.apple.com/hs/screen_shot.htmlReferencesApple drives initiative tobring structured content to the Internet. Press release, Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, California,USA, September 18, 1996.DEATHERAGE, M. HotSauce and Meta-ContentFormat. TidBITS 355, November 25, 1996. HotSauce FAQ, FAQ,Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, California, USA.Welcome to HotSauce(sm) MCF: Fly Through the Internet withHotSauce, Product information, Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino ,California, USA.GUHA, R.V. Meta Content Framework: A Whitepaper.Technical report, Draft, Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, California, USA.RUBIN, R.S. HotSauce lets users fly through theWeb. MacWEEK Gateways 10(36), September 23, 1996. Drexel University, College of Information Science and Technology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USAProject NameSiteMapPrincipal InvestigatorsXia Lin (xlin@ukcc.uky.edu)Project SummarySiteMap is a Java application that visualizes a given Web site or acollection of links. Through a Web robot, "SiteMap first traverses every link of theWeb site, collects statistical data, and indexes all the words and pages of the site. Based on the statistical data and theindexing, SiteMap converts each page of the site into a vector, and uses these vectors to train a neuralnetwork. As the outcome, the trained neural network presents the site in an organized map: subject areasare identified and labeled; their sizes and locations are determined by relationships among the subjectsand by their occurrence and co-occurrence frequencies. Links are clustered and located within theirrespective subject areas, represented by colored dots.""To help users interact with the [resulting] map, SiteMap provides various interactivetools. For example, areas can be labeled in more/less details through adjusting a scroll bar; linkscan be selected through clicking or dragging; contents of any selected links can be shown in aseparate window, etc." A Java-enabled browser is required to view the sample SiteMaps.Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://lislin.gws.uky.edu/Sitemap/Sitemap.htmlReferencesLIN, X. Map displays for information retrieval. Journal of the AmericanSociety for Information Science 48(1), 1997, 40-54.LIN, X. Self-Organizing Semantic Maps as Graphical Interfaces forInformation Retrieval. Thesis (Ph.D.), University of Maryland at CollegePark, 1993.LIN, X. Searching and browsing on map displays. In ASIS '95, Proceedingsof the 58th ASIS Annual Meeting, Converging Technologies: Forging New Partnerships inInformation, October 9-12, 1995, Chicago, Illinois, USA.LIN, X. Visualization for the document space. In Proceedings,Visualization '92, October 19-23, 1992, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.LIN, X., SOERGEL, D., and MARCHIONINI, G. A Self-organizing semanticmap for information retrieval. In SIGIR '91: Proceedings of the FourteethAnnual International ACM/SIGIR Conference on Research and Development inInformation Retrieval, October 13-16, 1991, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Eastgate Systems, Inc., Watertown, Massachusetts, USAProduct NameWeb SquirrelPrincipal InvestigatorMark Bernstein (squirrel@eastgate.com)Project SummaryWeb Squirrel is a software tool that tracks and visualizesInternet and other electronic resources, notably Web URLs and e-mail. The Eastgate Web Squirrel creates information farms, a phrase coined by CathyMarshall, Xerox PARC, and Frank Shipman of Texas A&M University, whose VIKI is an important influence on the design of Web Squirrel. Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.eastgate.com/squirrel/Farms.html ReferencesEastgate Web SquirrelFAQs, FAQ, Eastgate Systems, Inc., Watertown,Massachuestts, USA.BERNSTEIN, M. Enactment in Information Farming. In Hypertext'93, the FifthACM Conference on Hypertext : Proceedings, November 14-18,1993, Seattle,Washington, USA. Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing, Graphics,Visualization & Usability Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USAProject NameNavigation View BuilderPrincipal InvestigatorSougata Mukherjea (sougata@cc.gatech.edu)Project SummaryThe Navigational View Builder is "a tool which allows the user to interactivelycreate useful visualizations of the information space. It uses four strategiesto form effective views. These are binding, clustering, filtering and hierarchization. Thesestrategies use a combination of structural and content analysis of the underlying space for formingthe visualizations." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/sougata/Nvb.htmlReferencesMUKHERJEA, S. Visualizing the Information Space of HypermediaSystems. Thesis (Ph.D.), Georgia Institute of Technology, 1996. MUKHERJEA, S. and FOLEY, J.D. Visualizing the World-WideWeb with the Navigational View Builder. Paper presented at Technology, Tools and Applications, The Third International World Wide WebConference, April 10-14, 1995, Darmstadt, Germany. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 27, 1995,1075-1087. MUKHERJEA, S., FOLEY, J.D. and HUDSON, S. Visualizingcomplex hypermedia networks through multiple hierarchical views. In Human Factors in Computing Systems:Mosaic of Creativity: CHI'95 Conference Proceedings, May 7-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, USA. German National Research Center for Information Technology GmbH,Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute, Content-based,User-oriented information Interfaces Division, Visual Interaction ToolsDepartment, Darmstadt, GermanyProject NameLyberWorldPrincipal InvestigatorMatthias Hemmje (hemmje@darmstadt.gmd.de)Project Summary...[T]he objective of the LyberWorld research project ... [is] to develop novel, intuitively usable visual user interfaces,which significantly reduce the cognitive load of the user when working with database and informationretrieval systems." "In an experimental application prototype, the probabilistic information retrievalsystem INQUERY has been enhanced with such an interface. The resulting visual informationsystem is currently running with several full-text databases. CORDIS publication database contains 800 ... abstracts of scientific publications and project descriptions of European researchprojects." "The visualization user interface is designed on the basis of several agentbased tools for the three-dimensional graphical visualizations of the retrieved/storedinformation structures and the information dialogue itself. It provides users with intuitive control overtheir present search state, relevance of retrieved information items and potential further steps at anystage of the visual information dialogue. Therefore users are continuously in control of their'positions' in the searched information 'space'.""For reaching this goal the content space of the database/the retrievalsession has to be visualized.This is done by means of Search Trees, Relevance Speres and TerminologySurfaces. The contentspace of a visualized fulltext database contains term items and documentitems. They can easily be distinguished because of their different colours (blue and redrespectively). By maneuvring through the visualized content relations, users can search through all potentiallyrelevant text documents without having to read them completely or to contrive search terms of theirown. After gathering all potentially interesting documents in the Search Tree, the Relevance Spherevisualization is used to visually cluster information spaces and to determine the set of mostrelevant documents, i.e. the result kernel of the search."The LyberWorld INQUERY based "retrieval mechanism willbe updated with an integrated HTML parsing functionalty to enable theprototype to become a complete visual Webreader."The relevance sphere and the spiral tree have been ported from SGI-onlyversions to Windows 95 and Windows NT environments. These are currentlybeing converted into an Active-X-Control that will support VRML export andplans call for this functionality to be available in Fall 1998.Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www-cui.darmstadt.gmd.de/visit/People/hemmje/Activities/Lyberworld/ReferencesHEMMJE, M. LyberWorld - A 3D graphical user interface for fulltextretrieval. In Human Factors in Computing Systems: Mosaic of Creativity: CHI'95 ConferenceProceedings, May 7-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, USA. HEMMJE, M., KUNKEL, C., and WILLETT, A. LyberWorld - A visualizationuser interface supporting fulltext retrieval. In SIGIR'94: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual International ACM-SIGIRConference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, July 3-6,1994, Dublin, Ireland. Helsinki University of Technology, Neural Networks Research Centre,Helsinki, FinlandProject NameWEBSOM: Self-Organizing Map for Internet ExplorationPrincipal InvestigatorTeuvo Kohonen (websom@websom.hut.fi)Project SummaryWEBSOM is a means for organizing miscellaneous text documents intomeaningful maps for exploration and search. WEBSOM is based on SOM (Self-Organizing Map) thatautomatically organizes documents into a two-dimensional grid so that related documentsappear close to each other. The Self-Organizing Map (SOM), developed by Kohonen and colleagues at theHelsinki University of Technology, "is a general unsupervised learning algorithm for analyzing andvisualizing high-dimensional statistical data." "It is one of the mostwidespread artificial neural network models used in application areas suchas process monitoring, image analysis, telecommunications, and categorization ofeconomic data."Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://websom.hut.fi/websom/http://websom.hut.fi/websom/comp.ai.neural-nets-new/html/root.htmlReferencesBibliography on the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) and Learning Vector Quantization(LVQ). Bibliography. Prepared and maintained by the Neural NetworksResearch Centre, Laboratory of Computer and Information Science, HelsinkiUniversity of Technology, Finland.HONKELA, T., KASKI, S., LAGUS, K. and KOHONEN, T. NewsgroupExploration with WEBSOM Method and Browsing Interface. Technical report, Technical Report A32, Laboratory of Computer andInformation Science, Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland, USA.January 1996.HONKELA, T., KASKI, S., LAGUS, K. and KOHONEN, T. Self-organizing maps of document collections. alma 2, 1996.KOHONEN, T. The self-organizing map. Proceedings of the IEEE 78(9): 1464-1480.KOHONEN, T. Self-Organizing Maps. Springer, Berlin, 1995.(Springer series in Information Sciences 30).KOHONEN, T., HYNNINEN, J., KANGAS, J. and LAAKSONEN, J.. SOM_PAK: The Self-Organizing Map Program Package. Version 3.1 (April 7, 1995). Computer software, Technical Report A31, Laboratory of Computer andInformation Science, Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland. LAGUS, K., HONKELA, KASKI, S., and KOHONEN, T. Self-organizing mapsof document collections: a new appraoch to interactive exploration. InKDD-96, Proceedings, Second International Conference on KnowledgeDiscovery & Data Mining, August 2-4, 1996, Portland, Oregon, USA, 1996. Inxight Software, Inc, Palo Alto, California, USAProduct/Service NameInformation Visualization TechnologiesPrincipalInXight Software, Inc. (info@inxight.com)Product SummaryThis site profiles three information visualization technologies developed and refined at the Xerox PARC research centers and describes potential commercial applications.Demonstration or Prototype AccessHyperbolic Tree(tm)VizControls(tm)Hyperbolic TreePerspective WallTable LensCone TreeReferencesCARD, S.K., ROBERTSON, G.G., and MACKINLAY, J.D. The InformationVisualizer: an information workspace. In Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching Through Technology: CHI'91 Conference Proceedings, April 27-May 2, 1991, New Orleans,Louisiana, USA. LAMPING, J., RAO, R. and PIROLLI, P. A focus+context technique basedon hyperbolic geometry for visualizing large hierarchies. In Human Factors in Computing Systems:Mosaic of Creativity: CHI'95 Conference Proceedings, May 7-11, 1995,Denver, Colorado, USA. MACKINLAY, J.D. ROBERTSON, G.G. and CARD, S.K. The Perspective Wall:detail and context smoothly integrated. In Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching Through Technology: CHI'91 Conference Proceedings, April 27-May 2, 1991, New Orleans,Louisiana, USA. RAO, R. From research to real world with Z-GUI. IEEE Computer Graphics andApplications 17(4), July/August 1997, 71-73 MicroSoft(tm) Corporation, Redmond, Washington, USAProductSiteServerContactMicroSoft Offices Worldwide (http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/)Product Summary"Microsoft(tm) SiteServer provides a comprehensive set ofserver features and management tools that enable you to rapidly develop anddeploy Web content, deliver personalized content, manage site consistency andintegrity, and analyze usage patterns to continuously improve the site based onvisitor behavior and changing business requirements." SiteServer includes two site management tools, Usage Analyst andSite Analyst. Site Analyst is based in NetCarta's WebMapperwhich provides for the creation of a visual map of a Web site bypresentation as a Cyberbolic View, a hyberbolic visualization technique.SiteServer also includes a web-mapping function through its WebMapfeature, a function that "provides a visual representation of a site that canbe used for navigation, site analysis, and site maintenance."Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://cnet.com/Content/Reviews/JustIn/Screenshots/0,119,167-1-0-0,00.htmlReferencesMicroSoft(tm) SiteServer, Site Analyst Technical Details, Product Information, MicroSoft(tm)Corporation, Redmond, Washington, USA. MITRE Corporation, USAProject NameHyperspace ViewPrincipal InvestigatorNahum Gershon (gershon@mitre.org)Project SummaryHyperspace View is an enhancement to NCSA Mosaic that enables usersto view resources linked within a Web site as a visual 'tree' structure and to "modify visually and interactively the links among [Web] documents and images using a point-click-and-drag operation on the display of thehyperlink hierarchical structure. This enhancement allows the user toeffectively generate new, personalized links and to (visually) view the newand 'old' information globally and locally." " The new hyperlinks are storedat the end of the documents ...".ReferencesGERSHON, N., WINSTEAD, J., LEVASSEUR, J., CROALL, J., PERNICK, A. and RUH, W.Visualizing World Wide Web information resources.Paper presented at CIKM'95 Workshop on New Paradigms in Information Visualization and Manipulation,December 2, 1995, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. GERSHON, N., LEVASSEUR, J., WINSTEAD, J., CROALL, J., PERNICK, A. and RUH, W.Case Study: Visualizing Internet resources. In Proceedings, Information Visualization, October 30-31, 1995, Atlanta, Georgia,USA. IEEEComputer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, c1995. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Information Technology Department, Richland, Washington, USAProject NameSPIRE(tm) (Spatial Paradigm for Information Retrieval and Exploration)Principal InvestigatorJames J. Thomas (jj_thomas@pnl.gov)Project SummarySPIRE" allows users to explore complex relationships between text documents. A collection of visual andinteraction tools, SPIRE graphically displays images based on word similarities and themesin text. No prior knowledge of the information or selection of themes or topics isrequired. SPIRE creates its visualizations by processing these similarities into thekey topic and themes and organizing the data into visual representations that allow the userto explore and discover relationships between text documents.""Two technologies within SPIRE, Galaxies and Themescape, provide naturalvisual metaphors requiring little training to use. Galaxies computes wordsimilarities and patterns in documents and then displays the documents on a computerscreen to look like a universe of "docustars." Closely related documents will clustertogether in a tight group while unrelated documents will be separated by largespaces. In Themescape, themes within the document spaces appear on the computerscreen as a relief map of natural terrain. The mountains in Themescape indicatewhere themes are dominant; valleys indicate weak themes. Their shapes--a broad butte orhigh pinnacle--reflect how the thematic information is distributed andrelated across documents. Themes close in content will be close visually based on themany relationships within the text spaces." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://multimedia.pnl.gov:2080/showcase/pachelbel.cgi?it_content/spire.node ReferencesTHOMAS, J.J. Information visualization: beyond traditional engineering.Paper presented at the Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and VirtualEnvironments, April 26-27, 1995, Hampton, Virginia, USA. InHuman-Computer Interaction and Virtual Environments, NationalAeronautics and Space Administration, 1995. (NASA Conference publication3320). WISE, J.A., J.R., THOMAS, J.J., PENNOCK, K., LANTRIP, D., POTTIER, M.,SCHUR, A. and CROW, V. Visualizing the non-visual: spatial analysisand interaction with information from text documents. In Proceedings, Information Visualization, October30-31, 1995, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. IEEE Computer Society Press, LosAlamitos, California, c1995. Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, California, USAProject NamefsnPrincipal InvestigatorJoel Tesler (joel@jellotrees.esd.sgi.com)Project Summary"fsn (pronounced 'fusion') is a file system navigator in cyberspace.It lays out the directorys in a hierarchy with each directory represented by a pedestal. The height of thepedestal is proportional to the size of the files in the directory. The directories are connected bywires, on which it is possible to travel. On top of each directory are boxes representing individual files.The height of the box represents the size of the file, while the color represents the age"."fsn is intended as an investigation in information landscape navigation.Although the file system was chosen as a system to navigate through, similar paradigms could be appliedto other trees and graphs, such as call graphs." "fsn is a prototype and an experiment. It is neither a full featuredproduct nor a replacmeent for [other] file system manager[s]...".Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.sgi.com/Fun/free/cool_sw_01.htmlReferencesROGERS, B., CUNNINGHAM, S., and HOLMES, G. Navigating the VirtualLibrary: A 3D Browsing Interface for Information Retrieval. Working paper,Work paper 94/10, Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato,Hamilton, New Zealand, July 1994. TESLER, J. and STRASNICK, S. FSN: The 3D File System NavigatorTechnical report, Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, California, 1992. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Computer Science Department, Computer Graphics Laboratory, Lausanne, SwitzerlandProject NameBED (Bookmarks Exploring Dabbler)Principal InvestigatorSerge Rezzonico (rezzoni@lig.di.epfl.ch)Project SummaryBED (Bookmarks Exploring Dabbler) is a prototype 3D bookmarksgenerator using VRML. The "generator reads a Netcape bookmarks file, parsesit and generates a VRML file. A VRML browser can be used to visualize thescene and navigate through it." "The 3D generator works best on bookmarks organized with menus, as opposed tothe case where one has a long flat list of URLs. ... Submenus are also supported, with the limitation that starting from thethird level of submenus they are all considered at the same level. It is advisable not to have one single submenu with many other submenus init; instead, it is better to have different submenus directly in the mainmenu." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://ligwww.epfl.ch/~rezzoni/VG/tform.htmlReferencesREZZONICO, S. and THALMANN, D. Browsing 3D bookmarks in BED. InWebNet96 Proceedings Online, October 15-19, 1996, San Francisco, California, USA Technical University of Clausthal, Institute for Process and ProductionControl Techniques, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, GermanyProject NameVinetaPrincipal InvestigatorUwe Krohn (krohn@ipp.tu-clausthal.de)Project Summary"Vineta is a system prototype allowing navigation through bibliographicdata without typing and revising keyword-based queries. [Its] approach tovisualising documents and terms in navigational retrieval includes therepresentation of documents and terms as graphical objects, and dynamicpositioning of these objects in the 3D navigational space. Users cannavigate through this virtual navigation space examing individual documentsand clusters at various levels of detail."ReferencesKROHN, U. VINETA: Navigation through virtual information spaces. Paper presentedat AVI '96, Advanced Visual Interfaces: An International Workshop,May 27-29, 1996, Gubbio, Italy.KROHN, U. Vineta: visualizing navigational information retrieval. Paper presentedat FADIVA 2, the Second International Workshop on Foundations of Advanced3D Information Visualization, July 20-22, 1995, University of Glasgow,Glasgow, Scotland, UK.KROHN, U.Visualization of navigation retrieval in virtual informationspaces. Paper presented at CIKM'95 Workshop on New Paradigms in Information Visualization and Manipulation,December 2, 1995, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. University of Arizona, Karl Eller Graduate School of Management,Management Information Systems, Tucson, Arizona, USAProject NameEntertainmentSpace (ET-Space)Principal InvestigatorHsinchun Chen(hchen@bpa.arizona.edu)Project Summary"EntertainmentSpace is a set of concept-based search tool developedby theArtificial Intelligence Group in the Management Information SystemsDepartmentat the University of Arizona."ET-SPACE "contains a clickable self-organizing map (SOM) anda searchable entertainment concept space (thesaurus) both generatedautomatically using [a] DEC Alpha workstation. Users can use this server toidentify specificareas in Entertainment and/or other relevant search terms when searchingEntertainment servers or homepages."Funded mainly by an NSF/CISE "Intelligent Internet Categorizationand Search" project (1995-1998) and the NSF/ARPA/NASA Illinois DigitalLibrary Initiative project (1994-1998).Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://ai.bpa.arizona.edu/Libraries/frame1_demos_1.htmlReferencesCHEN, H, SCHUFFELS, C. and ORWIG, R. Internet categorization andsearch: a self-organizing approach. Journal of Visual Communication andImage Representation 7(1), 1996,88-102.CHEN, H, HOUSTON, A.L., SEWELL, R.R. and SCHATZ, B.R.. Internetbrowsing and searching: user evaluation of category map and concept spacetechniques. Journal of the American Society for Information Science49(7), May 1998,582-603. University of Birmingham, School of Computing Science, Birmingham, UKProject NameHyperSpaceNarcissusPrincipal InvestigatorsRobert J. Hendley (R.J.Hendley@cs.bham.ac.uk) Nicholas S. Drew (N.S.Drew@cs.bham.ac.uk) Andrew M. Wood (A.M.Wood@cs.bham.ac.uk) Project SummaryNarcissus uses ... "self-organising systems and virtual reality togenerate visualisations through which users can navigate and manipulateobjects in the visualisation. The system is implemented as a process whichcommunicates with applications (e.g. Web browsers and programmingenvironments) using KQML," and provides a degree of application independencewhich permits it to work concurrently with several, possibilyheterogeneous applications, facilitating collaborative work among users."The current model is loosely based upon physical systems with rulesdefining forces that act between the objects. These forces cause the objectsto move in space." In the running model, objects migrate through space so thatthey are spatially close to other objects with which they are semanticallyrelated."The user can determine which relationships are active within the model andhence which relationships will be responsible for generating attractiveforces between objects," and can also select individual objects and classes ofobjects which should be visible. The system can draw arcs to indicaterelationships between objects and label objects with their attributes (e.g. URL).Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~nsd/ReferencesDREW, N.S. and HENDLEY, R.J. Visualising complex interactingsystems. Presentation prepared for Human Factors in Computing Systems:Mosaic of Creativity: CHI'95, May 7-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, USA. HENDLEY, B. and DREW, N. Visualisation of complex systems.Presentation prepared for HCI'95: People & Computers, August 29 - September 1,1995, University of Huddersfield, UK. HENDLEY, R.J., DREW, N.S., WOOD, A.M. and BEALE, R. Narcissus:visualising information. In Proceedings, Information Visualization, October30-31, 1995, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. IEEE Computer Society Press, LosAlamitos, California, c1995. WOOD, A., DREW, N., BEALE, R. and HENDLEY, B. HyperSpace: Webbrowsing with visualisation. Poster presented at Technology, Toolsand Applications, the Third International World Wide Web Conference, April10-14, 1995, Darmstadt, Germany.University of Minnesota, Academic and Distributed Computing Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USAProject NameGODOT (GopherVR Organized Directories of Titles)Principal InvestigatorsNeophytos Iacovou (iacovou@boombox.micro.umn.edu)Mark P. McCahill (mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu)Project Summary"GODOT (Gopher VR Organized Directories of Titles is a tool thatcreates spatial organization of an author's works. Using an ISO Z39.50-1994client to connect to remote library catalogs, GODOT extracts anauthor's work in the form of USMARC bibliographic records." It then proceedsto format and classify the MARC records, creating an organization which canbe browsed and searched. Users can explore the works of an author using bothGopher and Gopher VR clients. A Gopher client provides linear lists, whileGopherVR visualizes the relationship and structure within these lists. Demonstration or Prototype Accessgopher://boombox.micro.umn.edu:70/00/gopher/Unix/Godot/GODOT%20v0.1ReferencesMCCAHILL, M.P. and ERICKSON, T. Design of a 3D spatial user interfacefor Internet Gopher. In Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 1995,Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 95-World Conference on Educational Multimedia andHypermedia, June 17-21, 1995, Graz, Austria.IACOVOU, N. and McCahill, M.P.GODOT: GopherVR Organized Directories of Titles.Paper presented at CIKM'95 Workshop on New Paradigms in Information Visualization andManipulation, December 2, 1995, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. University of Nottingham, Department of Computer Science, Communications Research Group, Nottingham, UKProject NameInternet FoyerPrincipal InvestigatorsSteven D. Benford (sdb@cs.nott.ac.uk)Project Summary"The Internet Foyer is an example of a mixed reality - an electronic meetingspace which spans the physical and virtual worlds. The Internet Foyer involves the use ofCollaborative Virtual Environment technology to create a navigable and populated 3-D visualisationof an organisation's WWW home pages." "Using collaborative virtual reality software, people can enter a specificInternet Foyer from anywhere over the Internet. Once inside, they can navigate the 3-Dvisualisation, selecting pages of interest. They are also made aware of the presence of other VR users and areable to communicate with them using live audio links in much the same way as they would be ifthey encountered them in a normal foyer in a physical buidling. In addition, they are made aware ofthe presence of users of more traditional 2-D (i.e. dimensionally challenged) WWW browsers who happento be wandering over these particular WWW pages at the time." "To complete the Internet Foyer, this visualisation is then projected ontothe wall of a physical foyer in a real building while, simultaneously, a real-time video image from thephyscial foyer is texture mapped back into the visualisation. This allows visitors to the virtual andphysical foyers to communicate with one another." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/research/projects/Foyer/#functionalityReferencesBENFORD, S., BROWN, C., REYNARD, G.and GREENHALGH, C. Shared spaces:transportation, artificiality, and spatiality. In CSCW'96, Proceedings ofthe ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, November16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. BENFORD, S., BROWN, C., REYNARD, G.and SNOWDON, D. The InternetFoyer. Paper presented at the Third Conference of the UKVRSIG, July 1996, DeMontford University, England, UK.University of Nottingham, Department of Computer Science, Communications Research Group, Nottingham, UKProject NameVR-VIBEPrincipal InvestigatorsSteven D. Benford (sdb@cs.nott.ac.uk)Project SummaryVR-VIBE extends the VIBE approach [developed by Robert R. Korfhage andstudents and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh] into three dimensions and creates visualizations of bibliographies.Users specify keywords that they wish to use to generate the visualization and place thesekeywords in 3D-space. Representations of the documents are then displayed in the spaceaccording to how relevant each document is to each of the keywords ... .The position of a document depends on the relative importance of each of thekeywords to it; thus a document equally spaced between two keywords is equally relevant to both,while a document close to a particular keyword is relevant to that keyword only. Absoluterelevance is depicted by the colour of the documents representation, the more relevance the document,the brighter the colour - this is necessary to distinguish between documents that are equallyonly slightly relevant from documents which are highly relevant but are placed in the positionbecause the proportion of their relevance to each keyword is the same." "VR-VIBE is a a virtual reality application ... intended to support theco-operative browsing and filtering of large document stores."Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/crg/Research/pits/vrvibe/ReferencesBENFORD, S., SNOWDON, D., GREENHALGH, C., INGRAM, R., KNOX, I and BROWN, C. VR-VIBE: A virtual environment for co-operative information retrieval. Paperpresented at Eurographics '95, the Sixteenth Annual Conference and Exhibition of The EuropeanAssociation for Computer Graphics,, August 28-September 1, 1995, Maastricht, The Netherlands.Computer Graphics Forum 14(3) (Conference issue), 1995, C/349-360.Populated InformationTerrains, Technical report, Communications Research Group,Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Nottinghman, England, UK. SNOWDON, D., BENFORD, S., BROWN, R., INGRAM, R., KNOX, I., andSTUDLEY, L. Information visualization, browsing amd sharing in PopulatedInformation Terrains. Paper presented at New Directions in SoftwareDevelopment: The World Wide Web, March 1995, the University ofWolverhampton, England, UK. University of Nottingham, Department of Computer Science, Communications Research Group, Nottingham, UKProject NameWWW3DPrincipal InvestigatorsDavid Snowdon (d.snowdon@cs.nott.ac.uk)Project SummaryWWW3D is "a novel browser that provides a single 3D display which integrates the display of theWeb documents themselves, the structure of the part of the web that the user has browsed and history information showing the links the user has followed in the recent past." "WWW3D uses the information contained in HTML tags to produce arepresentation of the document in 3D space. A web document is represented as a sphere which islabelled with the document's title. The contents of the document is placed around the insidesurface of the sphere. Displaying large amounts of text in a satisfactory way is difficult incurrent VR systems so textual information is currently represented by icons that can be unfolded to revealthe entire text. The first few words of the piece of text are displayed under the icon to give someindication of the contents. Images are displayed by texture mapping them onto polygons on the insidesurface of the sphere. Finally, links to other documents are represented as icons labelled withtheir destination.""To reduce the visual complexity of the virtual environment WWW3D makes extensive useof Level of Detail(LOD) operations. When viewed from outside a document is represented as anopaque sphere and the actual document contents is not displayed. When a user enter's adocument to view it the sphere is drawn in wireframe so that the rest of the virtual environment isstill visible"."WWW3D is implemented in DIVE and supports multiple concurrent users who are visible to each other and who may either be browsing the the same or different sets of Web documents." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dns/vr/www3d/www3d9-small.gifhttp://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dns/vr/www3d/www3d1-small.gifReferencesSNOWDON, D., FAHLÉN, L., and STENIUS, M. WWW3D: A 3Dmulti-user Web browser. In WebNet96 Proceedings Online, October 15-19, 1996, San Francisco,California, USA. HAGSAND, O. Interactive Multiuser VEs in the DIVE System. IEEEMultimedia 3(1), 1996, 30-39.University of Texas - Pan American, Department of Computer Science, Edinburg, Texas USAProject NameDocument ExplorerPrincipalRichard H. Fowler (fowler@panam.edu)Product Summary"The Document Explorer provides head-coupled stereoscopic viewing of3D visual representations for document collections, associative term thesauri, and individualdocuments. This style of interface has been called 'fish tank VR' and shown to be relatively effective for3D viewing and interaction tasks. The system also provides mechanisms to integrate query formulationacross the visual representations." "The Document Explorer employs context extraction, visualization, andinteraction tools to supply a 3D interface to text-based semantic structures. The goals of the system have centered on providing user-manipulable visualization structures and facile3D interaction techniques for use in the highly interactive process of information seeking. The figure above shows a screendisplay of a structure formed from document relationships." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.cs.panam.edu/info_vis/sigir95.htmlReferencesFOWLER, R.H., FOWLER, W.A.L., and WILLIAMS, J. L. Document ExplorerVisualizations of WWW Document and Term Spaces, Technical report, CS-96-6, University of Texas - Panamerican, Department of Computer Science, Edinburg,Texas, USA, 1996. FOWLER, R.H., FOWLER, W.A.L., and WILLIAMS, J. L. 3D visualization of WWW semantic content for browsing and query formulation. In WebNet96Proceedings Online, October 15-19, 1996, San Francisco, California, USA.FOWLER, R.H., KUMAR, A. and WILLIAMS, J. L. Visualizing andbrowsing WWW semantic content. In Proceedings, the First Conference on Emerging Technologies and Applications in Communications, May 7-10, 1996, Portland, Oregon,USA. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California, USAProduct/Service NameWebBook(tm)WebForager(tm)Principal InvestigatorStuart K. Card (card@parc.xerox.com)Product Summary"Current Web servers and browsers focus attention at the link and pagelevels. These levels are too low to represent gracefully some higher-level structures, resulting in manymore entities in the Web space than are necessary and hence to orientation and sensemakingproblems." WebBook(tm), is a "3D interactivebook of HTML pages. The WebBook(tm) allows rapid interaction with objects at ahigher level of aggregation than pages." Web Forager(tm) is "an application thatembeds the WebBook(tm) and other objects in a hierarchical 3D workspace. "Given a collection of web pages, it preloads those pages anddisplays them as a collection using an augmented simulation of a physicalbook. 3D graphics and interactive animation are used to give the user a clear indication of therelationship between the pages of the book. Each page of the WebBook(tm) is a page from the Web. Links arecolor coded so the user can easily tell the difference between a reference to another page in thebook (red links) and a reference outside the book (blue links). Picking a red link will animate theflipping of pages to the desired page. Picking a blue link will close the currentWebBook(tm) and look for the page elsewhere. If the page is in another WebBook(tm) stored on a bookshelf, thatWebBook(tm) is opened to the desired page.""The WebBook(tm) provides a representation of a more aggregate Web entity abovethe page and allows rapid local interaction with it. The WebForager(tm) allows interaction with multiples of such entities and allows for the necessary tradeoffs among fast access, number ofentities, and screen space." Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/Card/skc1fg2.jpghttp://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/Card/skc1fg3.jpgReferencesCARD, S.K., ROBERTSON, G.G. and YORK, W. The WebBook and the Web Forager: an information workspace forthe World-Wide Web. In Human Factors in Computing Systems:Common Ground: CHI'96 Conference Proceedings, April 13-16, 1996,Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. CARD, S.K., ROBERTSON, G.G. and YORK, W. The WebBook andthe WebForager: video use scenarios for a World-Wide Web informationworkspace. In Human Factors in Computing Systems:Common Ground: CHI'96 Conference Proceedings, April 13-16, 1996,Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Yahoo! Corporation, Santa Clara, California, USAProduct NameYahoo! 3DPrincipalYahoo! Corporation (info@yahoo.com)Product SummaryYahoo! 3D is Yahoo's VRML-based virtual world. Yahoo! 3D allowsone to explore more than a dozen main Yahoo! categories, or 'worlds' in three-dimensional space, interacting with objects rather than text, using three-dimensional space to organize these various subject groups.Note: Worlds vary in size 100K to 200K, and all are compressed. It is best touse Yahoo! 3D with an ISDN level connection, or higher. Each world is compressed and needs to be decompressed by the browser. Users with modems will experience significant download times. Navigation through the worlds may be sluggish on slower processors with low memory availability.Yahoo 3D! includes over 450 objects within its current. collection. Arts, Education, Government, Health, News, Recreationand Sports, and Science, are among the major Yahoo categories represented. Several pre-defined options are active, most notably 'Walk', 'Spin', 'Look', and 'Slide' for navigating Yahoo! 3D.Yahoo! 3D requires browser support for Live3D and uses the VRMLmodeling tool developed by Caligari Corporation. Demonstration or Prototype Accesshttp://3d.yahoo.com/3d/yahoo3d.htmlReferencesSEMINERIO, M. Yahooto debut 3-D search engine powered by Caligari software. PCWEEK ONLINE,October 25, 1996.Yahoo! and Caligari Corporation announce Yahoo! 3D. Press release,Yahoo! Corporation, Santa Clara, California, USA, October 28, 1996.GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHYBANK, D. Sofware firms look outside Windows to handle data. Wall StreetJournal, June 27, 1997, B4.BROWN, C., BENFORD, S. and SNOWDON, D. Collaborativevisualization of large-scale hyermedia databases. In CSCW and the Web - Proceedingsof the 5th ERCIM/W4G Workshop. Arbeitspapiere der GMD 984, GMD, SanktAugustin, April 1996. CARD. S.K. Visualizing retrieved information: a survey. IEEE Computer Graphics and Application 16(2), 1996,63-67.COCHRANE, P.A. and JOHNSON, E.H., et al. 34th Annual UIUC clinic highlightsvisualizing subject access. Library hi-tech news 142, 1997,1-8,10.DAVIS, R. Internet visualization technologies: old metaphors are new, userstudies hold true. Paper prepared for LIS5990, Internet InformationServices, University of Oklahoma, May 10, 1997.EARNSHAW, R.A. and VINCE, J. The Internet in 3D: Information,Images and Interaction. San Diego, Academic Press, 1997. FAIRCHILD, K.M. Information Visualization. Technical report, Institute of SystemsSciences, National University of Singapore, February 7, 1996.FOX, D. Graphical Elements for Information BrowsingSystems. Survey paper. Submitted in partial fulfillment for Ph.D.,New York University, Department of Computer Science, 1994?.GERSHON, N. Moving happily through the World Wide Web. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 16(2), 1996,72-75.GERSHON, N. and BROWN, J.R. The Role of computer graphics andvisualization in the GII. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 16(2), 1996,61-63.GERSHON, N. and EICK, S.G. Visualizations's new track: making senseof information. IEEE Spectrum 32(11), 1995,38-40,42, 44-47, 55-56.MCKIERNAN, G. Hand-made in Iowa: organizing the Web along the LincolnHighway. D-Lib Magazine, February 1997.MCKIERNAN, G. Information visualisation: the World Wide Web gets reallygraphical. Intelligence, Special Issue, 1997 Guide to the Internet,December 1996,116-118.MCKIERNAN, G. Seeing is believing: visual browsing for Information Retrieval.Demonstration and Discussion. Presented at Visualizing Subject Access for21st Century Information Resources, the Thirty-fourth Annual Clinic on LibraryApplications of Data Processing, March 2-4, 1997, University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.MUKHERJEA, S. Visualizing the Information Space of HypermediaSystems. Thesis (Ph.D.), Georgia Institute of Technology, 1996. PALMQUIST, R.A. and SOKOLL,S.P. Visual maps of the World Wide Web: helping the user find the wayThe Reference Librarian 60, 1998,49-60. RORVIG, M.E. WILCOX, M.E. Visual access tools for specialcollections. Information Technology and Libraries 16(3), September1997,99-108.SMALL, D. Navigating large bodies oftext. IBM Systems Journal 35(3&4), 1996,514-525. TUFTE, E.R. Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Connecticut, Graphics Press,1990.WHITE, H.D. and MCCAIN, K.W. Visualization of literatures. AnnualReview of Information Science and Technology 32, 1997,99-168.WILLIAMS, J.G., SOCHATS, K.M. and MORSE, E. Visualization. AnnualReview of Information Science and Technology 30, 1995,161-207.YOUNG, P. Three Dimensional InformationVisualisation. Technical report, Computer Science Technical Report 12/96, Department of Computer Science,University of Durham, Durham, UK, November 1, 1996. ZUBEREC, S.E. Visualization of Text Based Information. Thesis (M.A. Sci.), University of Toronto, 1994.The Big Picture(sm): Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web Databases is aclearinghouse of projects, research, products and services that describe orapply information visualization technologies for enhancing use and access toWeb and selected non-Web databases, notably MARC and bibliographicrecords. Selected significant reports, papers, and articles are also provided for each profiled activity. The clearinghouse is arranged by the name of the university, corporation, or other organization with which the principal investigator of a project is affiliated. A general bibliography of applicable works is also provided.As time and opportunity permit, additional projects, research, products andservices will be profiled within this collection. The Big Picture(sm) is compiled and maintained by GerryMcKiernan, A.B., M.S., Curator, CyberStacks(sm), Iowa State University,Ames, Iowa, and Science and Technology Librarian, Science and TechnologyDepartment, Iowa State University Library, and Peter J. Wasilko, Esq., J.D., LL.M., founder ofThe Invisible College of the Future. March 21, 1999http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/BigPic.htm |
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