Jeffrey Heer is a familiar name for people from info-visualization community. The Prefuse visualization toolkit created by Jeffery is used and referred by almost all infographics enthusiasts. But somehow I missed out his wonderful (almost an hour long) lecture at University of Washington, Voyagers and Voyeurs: Supporting Collaborative Information Visualization.

Apart from the awesome demos of his works on interactive visualizations, in this lecture, Jeffrey also talks about how collaborative annotations and discussions can enhance the effectiveness of an info-visual. According to him, if a large enough, interesting and interactive info-visual is made available to general audience, equipped with integrated annotation and commenting tools, individuals (not only experts) can find out amazing patterns and perspectives.

From the excerpt:

Interactive visualizations leverage human visual processing and cognition to increase the scale of information with which we can effectively work. However, most visualization research to date focuses on a single-user model, overlooking the social nature of visual media. Visualizations are used not only to explore and analyze, but to communicate findings. People may disagree on how to interpret data and contribute contextual knowledge that deepens understanding. Furthermore, some data sets are so large that thorough exploration by a single person is unlikely. Jeffrey Heer from the University of California, Berkeley, presents a number of novel visualization techniques in this University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering program.

This is 1000th post at SoulSoup. Since 2004 I am blogging almost regularly. Although, I must confess, despite of Jakob Nielsen’s suggestion to Write Articles, Not Blog Postings, SoulSoup is still a (constantly updated) directory of stuffs I am interested in (90% of the time). Sometimes I do write things which can be considered as ‘Article’ too, but frequency of that is almost negligible.

But, I’m not going to stop blogging in foreseeable future.

Recently we are witnessing a sentiment all over blogosphere (if that still exist), with the rise of ‘real time’ life streaming, blogging is dead! Charles Arthur from Guardian thinks The long tail of blogging is dying. New York Times writes Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest. Steve Rubel has announced that he is giving up on blogging and moving towards his Posterous-powered lifestream. His move, he reported, was due to a feeling that blogging “feels old” and that the new reality is about the flow of information. Louis Gray and Jeremiah Owyang feel that blogging isn’t dead and there is still a place for long-form writing. Jeremiah writes:

It seems as if blogging is becoming old hat, or at least evolving into something smaller, faster, and more portable. I’m with Louis Gray, (who has finally blogged his stance –great graphics) I’m not going to give up my blog, instead, I think of it as the hub of content, and the rest of the information I aggregate (notice the Twitter bar up top and the Friendfeed integration below). To me, joining the conversation is certainly important, but it doesn’t mean the hub (or corporate website) goes away.

That kind of resonates with my idea of blog as a dashboard, in the center of my personal knowledge management workflow. I no longer check Technorati ranking or page-rank, but comments still make me happy. To me a blog is the most effective filter to separate signals from noise. When I write a blogpost (even while writing just a link-post to point out a good resource or article of my interest), I can wrap that with my personal point of view and context. Or highlight the sections which I found interesting. I blog at 2 more places (here and here), with complete different context and purpose. I use twitter everyday (and sometimes little too much). I am using micro-blogging platform Tumblr as a visual bookmarking tool. And yes, I am in various social networks too. But my blog is the anchoring point of all other streams, stocks and flows.

I have a simpler explanation of this uproar nowadays (blogging is dead!). Blogging now reached mainstream. Celebrities got blogs, online edition of all major newspapers got blogging channels, all major organizations added another tab in their website – ‘blog’. Blogging lost its renegade, rebel status. (BTW – Twitter is a complete different story, it’s more of a group-broadcasting tool than publishing, being mainstream is OK there.) It’s like rise of off Broadway theater, then becoming part of mainstream broadway theater. It’s not ‘cool‘ anymore.

Well…I am not a celebrity blogger. To be honest, I blog for myself. And I will keep on blogging.

Related articles by Zemanta

• When blogging less becomes more (trishussey.com)
• On the Future of PR Blogging: Brian Solis vs Steve Rubel (socialmediatoday.com)
• Blogs Aren’t Dead, They’re Just Fragmenting (myventurepad.com)
• Steve Rubel Makes A Break (stoweboyd.com)

Digital marketing agency released a comprehensive Social Media playbook, and you can download it free from Scribd.

360i Social Marketing Playbook

Some quotable bytes:

If today consumers can easily avoid commercial messages they deem intrusive,  annoying, or irrelevant, then the central way to  engage them is to engage with them. Listen to them.  Respond to them. Take their ideas seriously. Change in response to their interests

Social media are highly effective in the middle of the purchase funnel, to improve brand or product consideration during the period when consumers are gathering opinions and listening to word of mouth

James from Incsub (SoulSoup’s Guardian angel) and Sue Waters released an awesome 32 page free PDF  WordPress MU Site Admin Guide!

Here are the contents:

1. Introduction to being a site admin
2. Changing your site defaults
3. Your blog theme options
—3a. Changing what themes are available sitewide
—3b. Changing what themes are available on a per blog basis
4.Editing your site options
—4a. Standard site options
—4b. Premium site option
5. Site admin tools
6. Working with blogs
7. Working with usernames
8. Configuring Supporter (PayPal upgrades)

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