Cute tricks with the Google API

Internet Ninja writes: "Since Google released their API for keen developers, some people have come up with some interesting stuff. Two that caught my eye the Touchgraph Google Browser which uses the 'similar pages' option to build relationships among URLs. A further extension of this is based on the sets functionality from Google Labs. I took the liberty of producing two screenshots. One based on Larry Wall and the other on Linus Torvalds. If Google isn't you there's also a similar browser based on the Amazon API as well"

Comments

Nice to note in the Linus pic... [useless + OT]

[The_Guv'na]

That the great man has most of the [few] girls connected to him. Well, 3 anyway, compared to 1 for the other guys assuming Pat Cadigan is "Patric" not "Patricia".

Ali

Re:Nice to note in the Linus pic... [useless + OT]

[codexus]

Pat Cadigan is a woman. She's a sci-fi writer and is often refered to as "The Queen Of Cyberpunk".

Re:Nice to note in the Linus pic... [useless + OT]

[topham]

She's Female. Wrote a book called "Synners". Excelent book. Much better than Neuromancer by Gibson.

I've read some of her other work and enjoyed most of it, but I think Synners shines the best. It's much better focused.

I knew it

[codexus]

Linus has read too many cyberpunk novels! (well, at least according to this graph)

There's a flaw somewhere..

[psavo]

No connnection from Linus to Alan?
gimme a break.

Re:There's a flaw somewhere..

[pthisis]

Nor Davem, Ted T'so, Stephen Tweedie, Ingo, Rik Riel, etc.

Indeed, not a single major Linux kernel developer other than Linus. Pretty weak.

Sumner

Interesting connection..

[lasertech]

I wonder what the link is between Eric Raymond and Abbie Hoffman?

3D baby

[siliconwafer]

I'd like to see someone build a 3D model program (maybe in OpenGL) showing the relationships of certain sites. Type in a few sites, let it search google and render, and boom.. that'd be awesome.

Re:3D baby

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a go at this using GraphViz, but their VRML export is broken at the moment. Maybe one day...

ads

[Anonymous Coward]

why is there a microsoft ad on this page ?

google info

[216pi]

for all those who want to be up to date about google, there's a nice blog especially for this topic.

Algorithm

[spencerogden]

Does any one know of open resources for graph visualization stuf like this? There solution is open source, but I would be very interested in just the algorithm for taking a graph of relations and plotting them.

Re:Algorithm

[j7953]

Only one I know about is Graphviz. There is a description of the algorithm somewhere on the site.

Re:Algorithm

[Kaz Riprock]

There is a java applet called "graph.java" floating around on the net somewhere...I can't remember right now. It's been used in a ton of places and it's very modular for creating any sort of interface and display that you want. I don't know it's underpinnings too well, but I'm sure it's open source.

Joy, Explanations, Further Directions

[Alex_Shapiro]

WooHoo! TouchGraph is on Slashdot!

Internet Ninja, smart of you to point out the Google-Sets based visualization. I think that this dataset is potentially even more interesting then web-pages.

The only problem with Google-Sets, is that they were designed to be used with multiple search terms, not a single seed. Thus the data returned is often noisy, as can be seen by people questioning the links.

Wouldn't it be cool if Google's data were cleaned up enough that you could determine the exact degree of relatedness between any two concepts? That way, any area of interest could be mapped using a graphing tool like TouchGraph. And mapped in real time too, I am still getting around to generating a cronological record of how relationships between publications change over time.

My feeling is that this cleanup will happen, and visualizing the results will be the motivation for doing so. A text based list of similar items disguises the errors in the ranking because readers don't give that much importance to the order of appearance. A graph on the other hand can show hundereds of associations as opposed to 20 or so items that are usually shown in a list. Thus, a graph magnifies the errors in calculated similarity degrees, which makes it a powerful tool for improving the formulas involved in the calculations.

There is much more to be said about TouchGraph, but there will be more supporting material to say it later, so let me just finish with a couple of links.

Amazon has also released an API, and an TouchGraph powered Amazon Browser is in the works for that. Screen-shot
Work is being done to integrate the TGGoogleBrowser with the ODP and to represent hierarchical information using background colors.
More information about future devolompents is available via this thread on Webmaster World

Thanks, --Alex

w3 binds all..

[Stephen R Hall]

The internet is obviously the centre of all things - www.w3.org gives you Microsoft and the Free Software Foundation only a few links apart

Delphi & GoogleAPI

[smeschini]

Is it possible to use GoogleApi in Delphi projects?

Salvatore Meschini
http://salvatoremeschini.cjb.net/
http: //web.tiscali.it/salvatoremeschini/
http://member s.xoom.virgilio.it/smeschini/