Curiouser and Curiouser! on faceted-browsing http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic faceted-browsing Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Faceted Radio weblog demo Mon, 07 Oct 2002 21:14:52 +0100 <P>This is pretty exciting.</P> <P>I've just exported an XFML version of my weblog to facetmap.com so that you can browse my weblog by-liveTopics and drill-down by Date of Publication (e.g. start at 2002, drill-down into May, drill-down into 23rd May).</P> <P>If you go to <A href="http://facetmap.com/demo/browse.jsp?map=curiouserandcuriouser">here</A>&nbsp;you will see an example faceted browsing interface. It's basic but quite functional.</P> <P>You will see two "facets"</P> <UL> <LI>The <FONT color=maroon>liveTopics </FONT>facet contains all my regular topics in a big old list (with number of posts in parens) <LI>The <FONT color=maroon>Date of Publication</FONT> facet contains one topic <FONT color=red>2002</FONT></LI></UL> <P>Underneath you will see the "top 10" pages at this point.</P> <P>If you drill down into either facet (please try drilling down into 2002 first) you narrow the range of available posts to display. Keep drilling down via and notice how this restricts the liveTopics that are displayed in the other facet to only those used in posts that are still available in your selected date range.</P> <P>Now start to think about other ways of chopping your weblog than just "Date of Publication"</P> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000657.html Browsable blogging Fri, 20 May 2005 13:49:39 +0100 <p>Over at How to Save the World, Dave Pollard is talking about <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/05/19.html#a1151">how to make blogs browsable</a>.<blockquote>The task of making weblogs' architecture more robust should be much easier. Weblog software with more dynamic information architecture would not only make blogs much more valuable to those browsing for information, they would make weblogs much more valuable in corporate environments. The current emphasis on adding 'tagging' information is, in my opinion, misguided: That would make their content easier to search, and might solve the information overload problem when they're embraced by keyword search agents, but it won't make them easier to browse. Much of the readership of weblogs is serendipitous -- people stumble on them (usually through search tools) when they're looking for interesting reading. Or, they blogroll a weblog because some of its content is of interest to them. What is needed is a way for people to browse through a selected subset of weblog content, all of the articles on a particular topic.</blockquote>I guess I'm a little surprised not to get a mention. My recollection (am I wrong?) is that I chatted to Dave about this (among other topics) back when <a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</a> and I were working with K-Collector.</p> <p>The basic idea is to allow authors to mark up their posts with topics (I still don't like the phrase <em>tag</em> in this context but I accept I may be in a minority) which are fine grained. Categories for me have always been too inflexible and unwieldy. The use of multiple topics allows rich description of a post.</p> <p><a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/"><img style="padding: 10px;" align="left" border="0" src="http://matt.blogs.it/images/all-topics.png"></a>The magic part is <em>what happens next</em>. In my current experiment it means I can generate a page which allows my content archive to be explored by topics. Clicking a topic name takes you to a page that lists the posts, in reverse chronological order, associated (I would say <em>tagged</em> if I didn't think it was confusing) with that topic. Under each post is a link to the other topics associated with that post. Hence each post also offers a cross-reference facility throughout the rest of the content. It makes my blog into a fully-browsable content index, automatically.</p> <p>These topic pages like <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/aggregators.xml">Aggregators</a>, <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/psychology.xml">Psychology</a>, and <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/blogging.xml">Blogging</a> are, if you check the URL, actually RSS2.0 feeds (with ENT topic metadata) being <a title="Read this for a bit of the background of how it was done." href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/05/07.html#a1801">rendered in the browser</a> as HTML. But you could also subscribe to a topic like <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/rss.xml">RSS</a> in an aggregator and only read my posts on that topic, blissfully ignoring what I write about <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/politics.xml">Politics</a>, or <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/microsoft.xml">Microsoft</a>.</p> <p>But there's more to come. I also publish a <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/facetmap.xml">Facet Map</a> of my weblog in <a href="http://xfml.org/">XFML</a> format. The potential value of this is not just in <a href="http://www.facetmap.com/browse/curiouser_n_curiouser">improved browsing</a> because XFML also offers a way to <a href="http://www.xfml.org/spec/1.0.html#connectingtopicsconcept">connect topics together</a>. This offers us the opportunity to make sense of each others tagging schemes, harmonizing the view of data whilst allowing us to preserve our own preferences.</p> <p>Two level, even three level, categorization is possible by grouping topics together although things can get tricky at this point. The approach Paolo and I took was to use a simple 2-level structure comprising <ul><li>Who</li><li>What</li><li>When</li><li>Where</li></ul>At the moment I only use two of these. My topics are currently implicitly <em>What</em> and I have automatically generated <em>Date of Publication</em> topics in my facet map file. I might do the other again, maybe.</p> <p>What I've done others can do just as easily. As much as anything it's a mind-set issue. If you think in terms of categories you're thinking in terms of a rigid hierarchy. Topics are more granular and should be used liberally since the tools at the other end will make them usable by users, as I have done.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002636.html