New Social-Network Mapping Tools Compared

Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many new visualization tools around us which try to map our social networks. In this column, I examined Inflow, a datamining tool digging through your email repository to discover and find trends to know more about your networks. Here is a quote: "Assuming you have a significant amount of e-mail traffic, the software will create a remarkably sophisticated assessment of your various social groups, showing you not only their relative size but also the interactions between different groups." I also peeked at TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, which uses Amazon or Google Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to visually describe how books and Web sites connect with one another. Finally, I took a look at a brand new way of visualizing Google search results, from anacubis. If you know about other similar new tools, please tell me and I'll gather your comments in a future story."

Free software equivalent to InFlow?

[Robotech_Master]

I was just wondering if anyone's come up with a free/open equivalent of InFlow, which is apparently commercial software (and probably Windows-only)? It'd be interesting to run it on my vast volumes of mail, but I run Linux...

Social networks...

[megazoid81]

How is the sexual life of geeks, crackerz and other members of the Internet underground documented? Check this [attrition.org] out. A Wired story [wired.com] about this too!

Re:Having lots of "visual brain cells" != usefulne

[netdpb]

Where does the author get his stat on proportion of brain cells dedicated to vision?! This is wrong. Visual cortex is in the occipital lobe, and areas V1 - V5 could be said to be "dedicated to vision." Other areas, moving into the parietal and temporal lobes are involved with visual cognition, but much of those, and the frontal lobes, are NOT involved with vision at all. Not to mention all the non-cortical areas of the brain, some of which are used for early visual connection between the retinas and the visual cortex, but most of which are not.

That being said, what he meant is perhaps that people's visual cognitive skills are much more evolved than their capacity for "abstract thinking" and intellectual pursuits.

Except slashdotters, of course.

(Mod me down for offtopic, or up for informative? Pant, pant.)