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[images.map.net...]
it is flash, so it is a slow download (for those of us that are still on 28.8:)) but believe me the other option is to download another app to flounder about.... so just watch.
....everything is very well done but unfortunately, they brought it down to a *very* simplistic level. ...Granted that may be the most effective way to show the average surfer but it is both abstract and familiar at the same time....but it is still largely meaningless.... just go see it.
... I always thought they would just show the linked web in a vacum using colors to illustrate intensity of activity
I was, and still am, one to defend that idea. It seems these days that customers and people that surf the internet expect flash or some other type of hype on the page they are going to. The expectations of customers drives designers to build new and flashier things all the time. Useless? YES. Meaningless? Besides proving that you can do it, YES.
I think there are two kinds of consumers and surfers:
1) The people who love flashy sites and don't weigh download time that much, this is the majority of people
2) Then there is the small percentage of people who can see through the BS, and actually skip the flash home page.
And their little "click the right button on your mouse" list of commands doesn't show up on a mac.
I think there are two kinds of consumers and surfers:
1) The people who love flashy sites and don't weigh download time that much, this is the majority of people
2) Then there is the small percentage of people who can see through the BS, and actually skip the flash home page.
Interesting, it depends on the reason WHY people are visiting the Web. Absolutely no evidence, but I suspect that the first category is of new users, who become less patient as the novelty wears off. The future is in the second category, when the Web is less a novelty, and becomes less of plaything as it starts to really make a contribution to the information age..
I pointed out the flash, not because I am mesmerized by bells and whistles, but because it showed what the site could do in a matter of minutes. If you watch it, you really don't need to surf the site AND you get a lot more feel for what it can do. That in itself makes it one of of the most *useful* flash videos I have ever seen. Is it entertaining? no. not at all....wasn’t supposed to be. (If you want one of those, go see the stick figure flash we were talking about in foo:)) If you surf the site without the plug in, or looking at the flash, most likely you will waste more time and much get less out of the site, than if you just download the flash.
The reason why I posted this is because this is the first time I have seen something (such as dmoz mapped) in a way that a person could actually see their site in relation to their competition. Useless? I don't think so... want to link to (or get links from) some of the biggest sites in your area? This might be one of the most efficient ways. The ikons that designate a site show (in one fell swoop): incoming links, out going links, and site size... fairly useful information. There is also standard search box that you can type in a query and are given a standard set of results... and then you can click on the 3d link and see that site at a ground level in the 3d world they create. ...In other words, for the first time an engine is looking at sites in terms of their relative magnitude, associating them with ideas and categories, AND presents them to the user in a 'drill down' and *visually oriented* manner.
.....Granted, this site is far from perfect. But it is one of the first of its kind. You might think it is the biggest waste of time and bandwidth, but in my opinion THIS (not the flash and the BS) is the future of search... no way around it. The idea of looking at sites in terms of their size and strength, within their overlapping categories/industries, is the way sites will be viewed and in the not so distant future. To think that search result results will always be presented in a top 10 list is silly.
That said, I think an engine like this is the biggest threat to the seo that can take a one page domain and disguise it as some major site worthy of all the visibility it gets... as well as the seo that floods the engines with low quality crap. If you look at these pages through the eyes of an engine like this, you see sites much more as they really are... mainly because you have a reference.
anyway, just a heads up.......
