If you don’t believe that visualizations can be used to navigate large bodies of data, you MUST check out the work done at IBM called Flash Forums and ForumReader (Kushal Dave, Martin Wattenberg, Michael Muller). Kushal presented the work at CSCW and it without a doubt the most compelling work i saw here this year. Their ForumReader is ideal for addressing forums with massive audience participation and a need to navigate crazy amounts of data with varying levels of quality (think Slashdot). FANTASTIC work!

I’ve gotten quite a few messages from folks concerned that i stopped blogging. I didn’t. I’m just traveling and not able to blog this week. Apologies! Coming back soon!