A More Visual Web

Our lives at the computer are pretty boring, especially if you’re a visual thinker. There’s lots of typing, reading, and text. Since the ASCII character set was created, smart folks everywhere have been trying to create a more visual experience and a less antiquated interface. Here are three decidedly different, much more visual looks at computer life.

Deskloops: Your Computer Life as a Video Loop A newcomer to the scene, still in beta, Deskloops from Xilokit  draws a graphic looping filmstrip of your travels on your computer as you move through your documents, the web, your photos, whatever. Each stop you make is captured as a graphic thumbnail. Scroll through the thumbnail images for immediate access to the window you want, and save your session as a Deskloop, a sort of 3D- zoetrope of where you’ve been. Send a loop to a friend or colleague so they can follow along. I’ve been using Deskloops for a few days to trace my research as I create posts on different topics. Though I’m still a bit of a stranger in a strange land, it’s been an interesting ride. Deskloops is free download.

OneNote: Microsoft’s e-Notebook OneNote could be Microsoft’s sleeper product of the decade. Think of it an electronic metaphor for the old fashioned notebook. You can set up a tab for a particular subject: say a vacation, a home improvement project, a course in school and then yank tidbits into the folder. These can be audio, graphics, websites, and video. Because it’s a pen-enabled app you can handwrite and make annotations to a drawing or document, too. And the new version that will ship with Office 2007 promises more shared whiteboard functionality. Folks I know who use OneNote frequently are evangelical about how it’s helped them organize their piles of digital stuff. One Note comes bundled on some OEM systems and costs $99 after a free trial. 

Visual Thesaurus: Seeing The Relationships between Words  And now for those of you who see words dancing before your eyes, the Visual Thesaurus maps the relationships between words. Type a word and it’s charted in a starburst diagram based on it’s relationship to other words, Trace a ray of the starburst and you’ll find yourself journeying from one word to another. You’ll either get lost in your words or find new meanings here, but it's a fascinating and beautiful exercise. Test the free trial and then download the online edition for $19.95 or the desktop edition for $39.95. Category: Software Keywords: Visualization, graphical, dictionary, thesaurus, organization