I’d like to get back to my ideas related to structured data. I touched it in my previous posts related to Tagging and Structured vs. Unstructured.
There are two Web 2.0 related technologies I’d like to touch today – Folksonomies and Tag Clouds.
Folksonomies is method to create classification of data based on user generated input. In opposite to taxonomy, that created before actually data already exist, folksonomy can be applied on existing set of data and can reflect way specific user classify this data. So, without changing of data, you can apply classification reflecting needs of customers and, what is very important – created by customers. This Folksonomies can be created by customers directly as well as generated by you application based on attributes and other type of data (also 3D data).
Tag cloud is visual presentation of data based on Folksonomy classification. Tag cloud presents weighted tags (words), normally ordered by particular criteria. Weight used to present frequency or amount of data and can help users in analyzing of information, filtering of big data sets or selection of results.
These two technologies can be used together to create user interface for data discovery. Such user experience can be customized to preference of each user, since each particular user will be able to correct and modify folksonomy initially generated by system. I like this approach as way to create unique data selection and analyzes experience. This is also excellent filtering user interface you can use together with search. Example of visualization can be cloud of tags/words representing changes in the product including change frequency.
You can try the following web service that can allow you to generate tag cloud from any data set or web site: http://www.tagcloud-generator.com/.
Your comments?
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