Comments on: Parallax

By: Georgi Kobilarov

Georgi Kobilarov — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:32:09 +0000

Hi there,

very interesting discussion about the term “pivoting” :)
And indeed, the metaphor I started with, was zooming and panning. But I never got the distiction between those two for the pivot operation, because it does at the same time increase the level of detail for a given set of things, as well as browsing to a different set of things with the same level of details.

Anyway, I think there is a great chance to do some collaboration here, especially since you guys are just around the corner…

And @Christian: yes, sponsoring DBpedia *is* a good idea! :)

Cheers,
Georgi

By: Semantische Filterfunktion mit Parallax | Web 2.0 Konzepte und Webdesign - Webkonzepter Michael Kraus

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:34:30 +0000

[...] via Well-formed Data [...]

By: David Huynh

David Huynh — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:04:51 +0000

I like “panning” as a visual metaphor, but I’m not sure if everyone would get it. I suppose we might have to settle for the more mundane phrases like “related set browsing”… But that’s not as cool as “faceted browsing”.

By: Moritz Stefaner

Moritz Stefaner — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:05:33 +0000

@David: Thanks for the reply! I agree that pivoting has different connotations and should really be kept for “flipping around a fixed/shared point” which is not what the technique is about, really. Sliding or panning indeed makes sense, as opposed, e.g., to zooming or flipping.

So, how about “related set panning”? “related set browsing”? “slide by relation”? “pan by relation”?

By: David Huynh

David Huynh — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:01:51 +0000

Hi Moritz,

Thanks for the link to Georgi’s paper! I talked with him at length when he was developing Humboldt, but didn’t realize he has published it to a WWW workshop.

I’m glad you asked what to name the principle… You’re the first one to think of that among all the blog posts I’ve seen. I’ve toyed with the term “link sliding” over the past few years. What I want to convey in that term is the difference from “link hopping”. Link hopping is jumping from one web resource to another over one web link, whereas link sliding is going along several links simultaneously. It’s not a terribly descriptive or even cool-sounding term, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything better. Stefano Mazzocchi mentioned that term here:

http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/153/

Now I purposely don’t use “pivot” because at least in my mind, “pivot” implies a limited number of dimensions as well as a limited data set that you figuratively hold in your hands and turn to different sides to get different perspectives. With “link sliding”, I’d like to convey the image of an infinite data set, and you’re simply browsing through it with more efficiency by going through several links at the same time. There is also a subtle difference between querying and browsing in the mindset.

The reason for conveying the image of more efficient browsing through an infinite data set is to get this new interaction paradigm more congruent with conventional web browsing, so that it might be more easily grafted onto existing web browsers.

I think it’d be awesome if we can figure out a better term than “link sliding”, or at least talk ourselves into believing that it’s not so awful :-)

David

By: Freebase Parallax Search Interface: Exploring Olympic Games Facts - SpellboundBlog.com - spellbound by archival science and information technology in the digital age

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:06:09 +0000

[...] Well-formed data posted about a new Freebase project named Parallax. This new search interface takes faceted browsing another step - in this case making it easy to jump sideways from one dataset to another related dataset. Parallax still includes filters on the left side - but the twist comes from the opportunity to select what are called ‘Connections’ from the list in the upper right hand corner of the search results page. [...]

By: Moritz Stefaner

Moritz Stefaner — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:17:30 +0000

@Bradley: Thanks for note, forgot to mention that! I know the term pivot browsing for the quite ubiquituous “find a resource, click one of its tags to find more of its kind” navigation principle. The term pivot really makes sense in this context.
But when you go from modern architects to the buildings they designed (two sets) isn’t this something different in principle? And what is the pivot?

Now I got it: Massive-multi-parallel-pivoting :)

By: Christian Langreiter

Christian Langreiter — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:51:51 +0000

I’m all for entity shift! Or maybe entity pivoting? ;-)

Parallax is a fascinating demonstration for sure; however, a powerful exploration (and query formulation) tool like that makes it all the more obvious how Freebase (still) has a Herculean task in front of them when it comes to data quality & coverage.

Maybe sponsoring DBpedia wouldn’t be a bad idea …

By: Bradley P. Allen

Bradley P. Allen — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:35:11 +0000

Commercially, as acknowledged by the Humboldt paper, we at Siderean were the first to provide an implementation of pivot browsing, which is the phrase our customers have for better or worse adopted as well.

By: Mat Noguchi

Mat Noguchi — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:17:49 +0000

Set browsing? Venn browsing? Union browsing?

Since you are finding sets related to sets, using some set terminology would be apt.

MSN