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DLS Screencast: first time with Microsoft Pivot
Microsoft Labs has an insanely-cool tech demo product called Pivot. In a nutshell, it's a completely new browsing paradigm which lets you "swim" in the ocean of data rather than drown in it. You can zoom in and out on complex sets of data, and slice and dice them in all sorts of crazy ways.
I saw a TED talk about it (you can watch it too, after the jump) and on the one hand it seemed very cool, but the guy presenting it was also the developer and was very familiar with it. This made me wonder what it's like to use it for the first time -- it's such a paradigm shift, that I just had to see what's the learning curve and how it actually works in real life.
So I downloaded and installed it, and made a short screencast documenting my initial impression. It's very different than the TED Talk because I'm obviously a first-time user, which is the whole point really. My video is after the jump.
My own video:
The original TED Talk showing an overview of Pivot:
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsArnieMar 10th 2010 3:17PM
Are there any more details about how the data is manipulated before its usable by Pivot? I would actually think that Wikipedia would be the most logical way to start this. However, if not condensed, can they extrapolate relevant information from something unrelated?
In layman terms I think this indicates very well all the degrees of connectivity we have with the world around us.
d.diddyMar 10th 2010 3:32PM
There are details on their website getpivot.com on how developers can create their own pivots. Basically, the developer creates an xml file, and a bunch of pictures in deep zoom format. I'm sure somebody could create a mashup that uses data from 3rd party services like facebook or flickr. The problem is that it only works on vista and win7. Hopefully, they'll release a Silverlight version so I can integrate this to my website.
ProlornMar 10th 2010 7:26PM
Wikipedia is one of the currently available collections. It's the only example of a "dynamic collection" they have right now, which from what I gather means a collection of over several thousand collections. Simpler collections can also be created more easily, though I don't know the details.
I'd encourage you to check it out. Unless you absolutely refuse to install anything non-essential on your system, it's worth a download.
modernsubstanceMar 11th 2010 8:33PM
this would be great for pornography.
schneitjMar 15th 2010 3:09PM
Pivot is nice, I hope they get a better calendar view.