From: Gina Miller (echoz@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon May 10 1999 - 23:51:40 MDT
In the 1980s, Apple Computer changed everything by employing a desktop
metaphor on personal computers. But putting a desktop on a screen was easy —
they’re both two-dimensional. The plan for the next user interface
revolution is a bit more ambitious — shove an entire three-dimensional
office onto your computer screen. There’s an army of small companies racing
to develop 3-D access to your data. It may sound far-fetched, but thanks to
more powerful PCs and desperate cries of information overload from the
masses, you may find yourself swimming through your data (rather than
sifting through it) sooner than you think.
PERHAPS YOU REMEMBER the ethereal “Visual Thesaurus” Web page that
whipped around the Net about 18 months ago. Engineered by New York-based
Plumb Design Inc., the entrancing Java application let users “move” through
synonyms, which appeared to float by like leaves on a pond.
It was almost three-dimensional, it was very cool and it had very
little real-life function — 3-D, after all, is only for games, isn’t it?
There have been high-end visual data programs such as SPS for some
time, used by sophisticated researchers. And companies such as Toronto-based
Visible Decisions Inc. have been telling finance executives since 1993 that
it’s easier to make tough decisions based on pictures than on numbers. But
those applications stayed, for the most part, on high-end Unix computer
systems in college libraries, dark research offices or high-tech trading
desks. And visualization tools were used exclusively to analyze data — not
to serve as a full-time user interface.
Not anymore. There’s been a flurry of recent attempts to transform
the Internet, and even your home computer, from lists of files and folders
that you open and close into physical space that you move around in.
In March, portal Excite.com launched Excite Extreme, a
three-dimensional front end for its Web service that lets visitors float
through main sections “My Excite,” “Channels” and “Tools.” AltaVista.com,
owned by Compaq Computer Corp., had already been offering a visual browsing
feature, AltaVista Discovery, since August.
In April, that cool thesaurus found a real-life application. Plumb
Design, which created the thesaurus with its tool Thinkmap, sold the concept
to Sony Music. The two launched a Web site April 14 — advertising agencies
looking to add music to a commercial now browse Sony’s 200,000-song database
by pushing around floating words that represent various moods or song
categories.
And most recently, a Xerox PARC spin-off called Inxight released a
free downloadable applet called MagniFind that lets users view their hard
drive in three dimensions, with file folders represented as floating circles
connected by lines.
HOW DO THEY WORK?
Excite Extreme, the Visible Thesaurus and MagniFind have very
different looks, but work similarly. Each requires the user to click and
drag to move through some kind of simulated space, then click to expand a
“tree” of some kind. They feel very much like movable, expandable family
trees — which they are.
“A hierarchy is a hierarchy,” said Bernstein. “There’s a number of
ways to depict them.” Neatly nested information — that is, data that fits
into “families” — makes for a neat hyperbolic tree. That kind of data is
more “deep and not so wide.” But if you’re the type to have hundreds of
files in each folder, your hyperbolic tree would need some pruning before it
would be useful. Still, on MagniFind’s Web site, Inxight puts its front end
on the entire Usenet. It works, but it looks mighty crowded.
“Certain data makes sense to look at from a 3-D perspective, like the
flow of air around a jet engine,” said Spotfire’s Ahlberg. “Other kinds of
data look better in 2-D.”
TO SEE THE WHOLE STORY AND TRY SOME OF THESE 3D WEB SITES FOR YOURSELF GO
TO:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/267806.asp
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
Web Page
http://www.nanoindustries.com
E-mail
echoz@hotmail.com
Alternate E-mail
nanogirl@halcyon.com
"The science of nanotechnology, solutions for the future."
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