tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76974972009-03-01T08:37:18.668-05:00This blog is a form of digital diary for my second year thesis development process at the Master of Fine Arts - Design and Technology (MFADT) program at Parsons School of Designmslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1128835846807585322005-10-09T01:25:00.000-04:002005-10-09T01:40:33.983-04:00

Finally I has able to build the project that has been in my mind for quite a while. This is probably my last entry in this blog, since VisualComplexity.com is going to incorporate most of the research and projects previously shown here, and with time, much much more...VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1115018271208173082005-05-02T03:17:00.000-04:002005-05-02T03:17:51.210-04:00

It has been a while since my last post, but as you can probably imagine, for the last two months I've been totally absorbed in my thesis. My final presentation is tomorrow, which is coincidently my birthday. Anyway, the first tryout of Blogviz is out, currently mapping 10 topics and approximately 350 blogs. I still need to add a FAQ and visual exploration page, so that people might have a better

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1108972942183908332005-02-21T03:01:00.000-05:002005-02-21T03:02:22.186-05:00

Recently I drifted a little bit the focus and mechanics of blogviz, mainly because of my most current immersion in the domains of Epidemiology and Diffusion of Innovations Theory. I’ve been reading a lot of interesting things and made my own annotations about these two domains, which I consider to be amazing resources to understand the behavior of information diffusion (or meme activity). To

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1108977355809076722005-02-19T04:17:00.000-05:002005-02-21T04:18:42.326-05:00

Blogviz is online, but still missing a lot of information. Nonetheless please check it out at: http://www.blogviz.com

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1107684753645819822005-02-06T05:11:00.000-05:002005-02-06T13:14:46.026-05:00

Very soon I plan to build my thesis website, however, this weblog will never disappear, it will just be an integral element of the website. It will contain all the research, writing, prototypes, presentations and a list of relevant precedents.

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1107685383451126752005-02-05T23:16:00.000-05:002005-02-07T12:40:47.290-05:00

Here are a few slides from last semester’s final presentation. Since I’m in favor of sharing ideas, concepts and solutions for the sake of a continuous feedback and gratifying evolution, here are some images of Blogviz, a visualization tool for mapping topics diffusion across the blogosphere. For more information check the Fall 2004 Final Presentation link on the right, under

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1107243739581751862005-01-31T02:37:00.000-05:002005-02-01T02:42:19.583-05:00

Ok, I know this is a little bit off from what I’ve been posting in this blog, but maybe this way you can understand why I’ve been away from thesis and school these last 10 days. The day after I arrived in New York there was a major fire in my building, and here’s the desolating scenario of my apartment after the fire, major destruction… I’m ok now and just moved to another place in east village (

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1105760968345340242005-01-14T22:48:00.000-05:002005-01-15T10:16:34.043-05:00

I’ve been away for over a month and I apologize to those who’ve been following my work and research for the last 6 months. I realize some of you share many of my interests and it’s truly motivating for me to feel I’m not doing all of this in vain. It’s always comforting to know that many others out there are working on parallel subjects and tormenting themselves with similar issues. December was

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1101790300040856642004-11-30T00:14:00.000-05:002004-11-30T00:08:17.110-05:00

Nemulator, a neuronal (neme-based) simulation project by Jared Schiffman (et al), is a very interesting project closely related to a recent drift in my thesis project, towards an improved understanding of meme activity. As Jared Schiffman, Tom White and Max Vankleek clarify: “Central to the Society of Mind are the concepts of 'nemes', which are agencies responsible for representing fragments of

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1101309053208993722004-11-24T10:09:00.000-05:002004-11-29T23:25:09.716-05:00

In a conversation with my Thesis Writing instructor, Mark Stafford, I was able to understand how my thesis is closely related to the concepts of memetics and meme behavior. I believe I’m developing a “topological model of meme activity”, even if until now I was somehow oblivious to it. I was too much concentrated in the idea of a word-of-mouth behavior, an expression used by Malcolm Gladwell in “

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1100579602555010942004-11-16T13:14:00.000-05:002004-11-16T01:11:01.203-05:00

While on my second prototype I was trying to deal with a structured way to map connectivity among blogs, by isolating the hubs and sort the nodes according to popularity, recently, I’ve been exploring possible ways of visualizing diffusion patterns over time. I tried several models based on a radial structure where time becomes the major constraint. In most of these experiences I faced a common

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1100577211296621922004-11-15T22:52:00.000-05:002004-11-15T22:53:31.296-05:00

A few weeks ago I referred one of the best projects I saw at InfoVis 2004. The project author, Andrew Vande Moere, has recently updated his website with images from the project and a downloadable (.pdf) file of the paper. The title of the paper is “Time-Varying Data Visualization using Information Flocking Boids”, and it was truly one of the most innovative and appealing visualizations I saw in

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1100577809622947852004-11-15T21:36:00.000-05:002004-11-15T23:03:29.623-05:00

On my third presentation, where I showed my second prototype, I also illustrated some of my initial studies regarding the linkage among blogs. Connectivity in the blogsphere is a very binary process; we only need to make two questions. Is blog A connected to blog B? If so, who is linking whom? If none of them is linking to the other, they become momentarily isolated islands. For that presentation

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1099884421700114052004-11-07T22:26:00.000-05:002004-11-07T22:27:01.700-05:00

Here’s a list of my recent bibliographic references: > Bibliography

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1099880784407423202004-11-06T21:25:00.000-05:002004-11-07T21:42:50.600-05:00

From a discussion in my Signs of Life class I decided to explore a little more the concept of the prefix tele- in my thesis writing lab context paper: “If we explore the word syntax structure of most communication tools prior to the Internet, such as telegraph, telex, telegram, and telephone, we encounter the constant presence of the prefix tele-. Tele is a greek word that means “at a distance”,

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1099881079631286542004-11-02T23:38:00.000-05:002004-11-07T21:34:53.720-05:00

Just bought the new book “Creative Code” from John Maeda. Pretty interesting even thought it’s not about Maeda’s work but his considerations over other new media artists/designers. Concentrating mostly in the work developed at the Aesthetics and Computation Group at MIT Media Lab, the book exposes a few known names, such as: Yugo Nakamura, Martin Wattenberg, Ben Fry, Golan Levin, Casey Reas,

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1098661539198165432004-10-24T19:49:00.000-04:002004-10-24T21:53:54.910-04:00

Here it’s my first visual prototype shown at the mid-term review. The underlying concept was based on a major aspiration: nodes local stability and links global connectivity. What I tried was to position the nodes in a structured way, so they would remain fixed, and to some level, under control. The links, however, would be in constant change and the outcome would be highly random and

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1098668773270796362004-10-24T18:34:00.000-04:002004-10-24T21:46:13.270-04:00

Exactly a month ago, on September 24th, Technorati hit the 4 million mark, and it’s currently tracking 4,379,577 blogs. Coincidently, 4 days before, Wikipedia Foundation announced the creation of the one millionth article in Wikipedia. Interesting coincidence.

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1098668966596973872004-10-20T02:17:00.000-04:002004-10-24T21:49:26.596-04:00

This link contains very interesting statistics from LiveJournal’s blog community, tracking 4.918.064 blogs/journals. The age distribution results are not surprising but I was impressed with the majority of blogs (67.1%) being maintained by women, against men’s less then half percentage of 32.9%. The raw data is free to use.

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1098070370574723122004-10-17T23:32:00.000-04:002004-10-17T23:32:50.573-04:00

Yesterday I went to the Chelsea Art Museum and I was happy to see Bradford Paley’s Code Profiles project. CodeProfiles was written in August 2002 and commissioned by Christiane Paul, Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. “Code Profiles is a software that displays its underlying code and comments on itself. The code reads in its own source and displays it in a tiny font. As users

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1097794199137190962004-10-15T02:45:00.000-04:002004-10-17T23:32:30.236-04:00

While in Austin for the InfoVis 2004 Conference I took some pictures of the city. If you're interested check this link: Austin Images

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1097747175237643212004-10-14T05:45:00.000-04:002004-10-17T23:46:32.193-04:00

After two and a half months of a lot of reading and extensive research in complex networks visualization, which coincided with the conclusion of a parallel project developed at PIIM, I believe it’s time to delve deep into the production/design phase. As much as I like to research and analyze other people’s projects, I’m eager to start developing my own concept. I’ve been doing a lot of sketching

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1097738638850605452004-10-14T03:22:00.000-04:002004-10-14T04:53:23.810-04:00

Geotime The first project showed at InfoVis 2004, on Monday 8:30 AM, was one of the most innovative. Geotime by Thomas Kapler is a project financed by NGA and it aims to analyze observations over Time and Geography, which is a particular hard task to visualize. I believe this project is one of the best that I’ve seen in overlapping these two realms. For more information here’s a link to the

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1097729268541544422004-10-13T23:47:00.000-04:002004-10-14T03:56:05.176-04:00

I just returned from the InfoVis 2004 Conference in Austin, Texas. As the only Parsons student present at the Conference I feel the responsibility of exposing some of the projects shown there. This trip was sponsored by “PIIM - Parsons Institute of Information Mapping” where I’ve been working for the past month as a design researcher. I went together with Takaaki Okada, also from PIIM. We

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7697497.post-1097745799983452112004-10-08T17:19:00.000-04:002004-10-14T19:24:50.940-04:00

Thread Arcs is a fresh interactive visualization technique designed to help people use threads found in email. “Thread Arcs combine the chronology of messages with the branching tree structure of a conversational thread in a mixed-model visualization that is stable and compact. By quickly scanning and interacting with Thread Arcs, people can see various attributes of conversations and find

mslimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03292626945868077881noreply@blogger.com1