Strange Maps is possibly my favorite blog of all time. Grab the feed and be prepared to be amazed and delighted on a weekly basis. Here's a recent map [a subway map of Web trends 2.0] and a brief explanation [full post here] ...
Intangible and invisible, but omnipresent: that combination of
qualities used to describe only God (or the sense of dread left by His
absence). Now it also applies to cyberspace. Any
attempt to map the internet is bound to fall frustratingly short of its
true complexity, or to be so complex as to be illegible.
This is actually the second such mapInformation Architects (here; their Web Trend Map 1.0 is here). As they themselves define it, this map shows “the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective.” produced by
The map shows 15 distinct lines, organising the top websites into categories sucs as News, Sharing, Main Sites, Music, Political Blogs, Chinese Line, etc. Obviously, there is overlap. That’s where the Junctions come in: YouTube, for example, is on the Main Sites line, but also on the Movies and Knowhow lines. WordPress sits astride the Social News, Design and Technology lines.
An interesting innovation is a 6 month weather forecast for some of the stations (as the weather’s generally rather stable in a genuine subway), indicating their chances in an ever changing cyberspace. Google’s future is ‘unreal’, Xing’s is ‘insecure’, the Washington Post’s is ‘changing’, MSN is headed for ‘storm’. Whether the wheather may be wet or fine, is tied in with their being web sites of generation 1.0 or 2.0. A few stations are classified more specifically as 0.5, 1.5, 2.5.
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