Talk:Huddersfield-paper

Huddersfield paper - Making visible the invisible: Data Visualisation in Art, Design and Science Collaborations

TITLE:
Buzzaar: An Environment and Tool to Map Your Web

KEYWORDS:
web, collaboration, data visualization, mapping, user, knowledge sharing, network

AUTHORS:
Nathalie Perrin meetopia- netart Lausanne perrin@meetopia.net

Katarzyna Boron meetopia- netart Genève cax@meetopia.net

Adla Isanovic Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo a.isanovic@buzzaar.net

Alexander Elmer Lausanne alexander66@sunrise.ch

Martin Rajman EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland Martin.Rajman@epfl.ch

Le Bao Anh EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland lbanh@ifi.edu.vn

Tran Huu Duc EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland huuduc.tran@epfl.ch -

ABSTRACT
As Web users, we visit pages and our navigation history is often locally stored in our browser logs thus creating a data set that contains a lot of valuable information, not only for ourselves but also for other peer users we might be willing to share this information with.

How can we best exploit this information? How can we give it a meaning and transform it into < a knowledge that we could can be shared with others?

Buzzaar is a tool and a web site that provide answers to such questions. It is free and available for all. Buzzaar users can interact with their browsing history, and transform it into meaningful, dynamic webmaps that intuitively and dynamically represent their interests and navigation habits. A Buzzaar' webmap is an efficient representation of the web pages visited by a user. It can be easily modified and tailored to specific user needs. In particular, users can tag, filter, and sort the visualized data, and customise its appearance.

These webmaps can be easily shared with friends and colleagues. They Webmaps can also be merged or projected into each other to identify their commonalities or differences, thus allowing their owners to better understand and benefit from exploit the knowledge they contain.

The Buzzaar website also allows anyone to register to the Buzzaar network, within which users can share their webmaps and collaboratively build a common webmap representative of the user community as a whole. This common webmap provides a useful context to better interpret each user's peer's individual webmap.

info: www.buzzaar.net

1. INTRODUCTION
The development of digital technologies has  brought fundamental changes into our lives, culture and society. Social networking media (i.e. Twitter, facebook),  user generated sites (i.e blogs, Wikis, YouTube, Flickr, delicious…), and peer-to peer networks[1] have contributed to build a developemnt of a new participative culture where users “users”[2]  have access to tools to create, share, remix contents  with peers.

As web users,we spend significant time online, searching for contents and visiting numerous web pages. These actions leave traces that can be collected data which contain information   about the pages we visit, typically usually within browsing history logs that contains visit frequencies and if the specific buzzaar browser plugin ( hereafter called the buzzaar toolbaar) is used, visit co-frequencies. the relations and the associations we built among them. These data represent potential sources of valuable information for various, private and public purposes is information is potentially valuable for different purposes, private and public interests.

Commercial companies (e.g search sites such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, e-commerce sites such as Amazon or specific purposes sites such as Compare.com www.compare.com ) have well  understood  how useful the above mentioned data it  can  be  when if properly analyzed and transformed into valuable exploitable information  about their targeted audiences. There are tools that already allow them to profile their users Unfortunately, However in most cases, we users cannot access this the generated information that is kept private  despite that we as although the original data have been created by the web users, themselves have  contributed to create it.

On the other hand, our data is remain locally stored in our browser logs as our own “ (navigation history),  but there are currently no popular and easy to use tools to exploit it and they are quite difficult to share in an efficient way (e.g sites such as Delicious do allow to share bookmarks but do not provide any intuitive graphical visualization nor they provide mechanisms for users data aggregation). It is a long list of textual adresses and other mesures For average users it  is hard to transform it into a meaningfull information;

We believe that data created by users should return to users who should be able  to interact with it and  - if they wish -  to share it with others in order to build a culture of  the commons;1 a participative and distributed knowledge, part of our digital culture-.

Besides nowadays Contemporary societies produce  such an amount of data that their presentation it has become difficult to cope with, read, understand  and explore. exploitinformation from it. . The visualization of data allows to visualize this information and then give more sense to it. can translate these data into more or less intuitive graphics and then give sense to information simplify their representation and make their relations more obvious and easier to cope with. It shows Visualisation shows relations that are otherwise difficult to represent. Tools for visualization enable us to create dynamic interactive displays where users can see, explore, sometimes even touch and manipulate contents.They are also tools for contextualization, signification conscientiousness and actions,  and can potentially contribute to public awareness and lead to their empowerment.

One well-known figure for visualizing dynamic data is the web mapping.

Data created by users should return to users who should be able to interact with it and  - if they wish -  to share it with others, in order  to  build a culture of  the commons;1 a participative and distributed knowledge, part of our digital culture.

The goal of the buzzaar project described in on this paper is to fill the identified gap. In particular, the project aims at building a free and publicly accessible server (the buzzaar server) providing:

-a firefox plugin (the buzzaar toolbar) allowing the users to gather their site visit frequencies and co-frequencies and to store them in a private space on the buzzaar server;

-a java applet (the webmap manager), running on the buzzaar server, allowing registered users (1) to visualize their navigation data in the form of interactive graphical webmaps that intuitively represent their interests and navigation habits.; and (2) allow them to share their webmaps and collaboratively build a common webmap representative of representing their community as a whole; This common webmap (as any other shared webmap) can then be used by all registered users to be merged or projected into their private webmaps in order  to identify commonalities or differences, thus allowing them to better understand and exploit  the knowledge they contain. In addtion, the common webmap is also accessible to any (not necessarily registered) user through the buzzaar server, and, as such, represents a valuable source of public information, when manipulated with the webmap manager.

Both the buzzaar toolbar and the webmap applet are under the GPL licence and the content of the buzzaar website is under a creative commons license in order to contribute to the development of a common culture on the web.

The long term goal of the buzzaar project is to contribute to the development of a widely exploitable exploitative set of web data management techniques and tools allowing reliable collaborative creation of publicly shared information and providing efficient ways to protect users' privacy by keeping their identity and contributions anonymous.

The team of the buzzaar project is composed of researchers from the EPFL Artifical Intelligence Laboratory (LIA) and the netartists from the meetopia community [4]

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: we start with main concepts, then follow with the presentation of experimantal Buzzaar prototype, related works, while final section provides some general concluding remarks.

get rid of that part and replace it by table of content as suggested by kasia ? The rest of this paper is organized as follows: chapter 1 part 1 deals with concepts… ; chapter part 2 deals with experimental buzzaar prototype; chapter part 3 deals with related works and finally chapter part 4 provides some general concluding remarks.

2. CONCEPTS
2.1. Two populations of users: guests and members; registered users differences and commonalities

Buzzaar is a tool that is meant to be is free and accessible for all.Everyone can use it. There is no registration nor installation needed to play with the buzzaar public common webmap.

It provides users with two different spaces: The buzzaar public common webmap: which is the result of all merged data merged from all registered users, and a private space one reserved for for each member where they can manage their data are stored on the buzzaar server ones private space: the members space where their data are stored and the buzzaar public common map which is a merge of all data from all registered users.

We Buzzaar distinguish two types of users: the guests and the registered members. Each of them have a different status.

Guests can play with the public common webmap. They can interact with them , filter, tag, project, merge, export /import and share their given results.

Registered Members have different privileges; they have their own private space on the buzzaar server where they send their data. They can store, menage and exploit their webmaps. They also can use all  the buzzaar functions provided by the application  and operations, for manipulation,  tailorisation and customisation. They can access and interact with the common webmap which provides a useful context to better interpret each peer's individual webmap.

In order to have their own map and interact with it, to send their data to the server, users need to (1)register to buzzaar, (2)download and install the buzzaar toolbar, a (Firefox) plugin which will allow them to share send their data. ( share send = vote for an URL).

When peers vote for an URL they send it to the server; it means they also add it to the buzzaar common webmap. Therefore they share their data with peers and contribute to build a common knowledge.

The buzzaar toolbar is a plugin for Firefox web-browser. This tool helps users to manage their data (gather and send) from their browser history to the buzzaar server. Directly from the plugin, members can define if they want to ban</span prohibit some domain sharing ( avoiding to avoid to send sensitive and personal information to peer review). At any time, they can decide ether to start sharing (send) or stop sharing (suspend from sending) their data to the buzzaar network.

2.2.Interactive visualisation; Main principles behind the interactive graphical layout visualization

Buzzaar webmaps are visual representations of the rough textual data sent by members and stored on the server and sent by its members. These textual data comes from its users who are registred members. of the system and who agreed to send their data to the server.

visualisze web activity data One of Buzzaar our challenges was to determine what should be shown, how, when how and when, and what kind of information would the most useful to the user. users.

There are several examples of web maps that efficiently visualize relations between web pages visited by web users. ( see "related Works" SEE related works. ). They can translate huge amount of textual data into relational visual representations that are simple and understandable. see "Related works"

Since Today’s maps can be fully interactive, multimedia, explorable, collaborative and sharable, users are in position to experiment with their emotional and intellectual understanding and knowledge building. One well-known figure for visualizing dynamic data is the web mapping.

For these reasons, we have chosen dynamic and interactive web graphs that users can edit, manipulate, filter and share, transforming these textual their data into understandable visual representations which These representation can be easily modified and tailored to specific needs and interest. Operations such as filtering, searching, merging and projecting results can be easily monitored and provide users with a different display of information at each time. Therefore, such webmaps have infinite display possibilities: Our webmaps They produce graphs with up to date data, they can filter information, aggregate contents, enable tools for layout personalization.

They show different information such as pages popularity i (number of page /URL visits), co-frequencies (relational frequencies among pages and/or users), categorization (tagging and filtering), using different visual artifacts: size, opacity, position, colors and alpha transparency.

In that way, Therefore,in acting on their webmaps and with the different visual elements users can easily see and understand differences among pages, nodes or similar data. Using the elements of the visual language (that are commonly called metaphors) of an intuitive environment, They can associate meanings and better situate themselves in the informational context.

2.3. manipulate the webmap Webmap manipulation (tagging, filtering, customizing,merging, projecting)

Aggregation

Our Webmaps contains different levels of information: domain URL - associated URL (files and sub-domains) and aggregated information) and nodes (different type of files - files of different type; images, documentation text files, movies, web pages) html contents, etc

Webmaps have two three different aggregated[6] modes: domain mode and, tag mode and co-frequencies

Domain mode is the layout that provide users with their history of navigation classified by domain URL.

Tag mode is the layout that provide tag classification (see below tag and filter). The aggregated domain has visual markers that signify their nature. Users can visualize information at different levels of granularity1 (e.g. aggregated level or detailed level) by expanding or collapsing aggregated node under examination.

Aggregated contents such as co-frequencies[7] help contextualizing user's interests. It can be used as requests to a peer for a recommendation or advice (if they share same interest), Many companies (such as Amazon) already use this type of collaborative filtering and recommendation, among them is e-commerce site Amazon,(but for several reasons, these recommendations are not translated into visualizations. Results as recommendations and suggestions, are mostly rendered in textual way.

Users can decide whether they want to see co-frequencies and how (all co-frequencies, co-frequencies from or to activated node). That action shows users what relation they make between data, and how they behave online with informations.

Tag and filter

The web provide users with a lot of different interested information. When surfing on the web, users may want to collect and classify information they find important. Users can classify their favorite links, by bookmarking them. Each web browser provide them with the possibility to tag and bookmark their favorite links. Bookmarking links has become a very quite popular behaviour are very popular in web surfing activity. Social bookmarking web services And websites like Delicious propose them offer the possibility to its members to share their bookmarks with their peers. It is the folksomy.

In buzzaar webmaps, beside the domain mode, Buzzaar provides users with a tag mode, allowing them to classify their links and give users can aggregate and classify their nodes giving a personal meaning to their information. by tagging them. They use the tag mode for that. When entering the tag mode, they can create new tags and assignate nodes to them.They can classify their tags using different chosen colors. (see webmaps customisation) users can create as many tags they want, differentiate them with colors, etc. When shared with peers, a tagged webmap keep its tags, allowing users to share their tag as well as their data.

Users have also the possibility to filter their data in order to focus on specific topics or URL names. They can save the result of such requests as a separate map too (to save it as a particular moment or part of the research).

In order to help users in manipulating and interacting intuitively with their data, Buzzaar allows them to share their webmaps with their peers.(they can send their data to friends or relatives.) They can upload someone else's one peer's data, compare and / or add it to theirs in order  to manipulate and improve their results.

Two operations are designed for that: merge and projection.

Merge is operation is used when users want to add someone's data to theirs.

In this process, resources of two maps are merged. The highest value counts for the whole. It allows users to put their resources in common map, and to build a representation of common interests. Mathematical formula of the merge operation:



Projection is used when users want to compare someone's data with their own theirs.

This process represents a comparison and a differentiation of data. It allows users to see what kind of information from the projected map is related/similar to theirs and then eventually to add these information to their map by tagging and saving this result.. The projection allow users to compare, access to others' resources fullfil their interests and improve their knowledge.  Mathematical formula of the projection operation:



2.4. Webmaps representation and customisation;

Buzzaar webmaps are user-centered.Graph is not displayed as does not represent a network without a center. It is a map of their interests and knowledge and it needs to be user oriented and It represent a map of users' interests and knowledge, and therefore, it means to be personally addressed. Users are at the center surrounded by their own navigation history.

The interface layout it divided in two parts: the webmap and the list. The webmap is the graphical translation of visited URLs, while the list is its textual representation. Basic principles that define the relationship between graphical environment and list are simultaneity and reciprocity - any change on the list is immediately represented on the graph and vice versa.

Nodes and domain URL are represented by circles. Each of them represent one level of information. Circles are commonly used in other similar efficient graphics and visualizations (see "Related works"). We believed that This visual metaphor is familiar and easily understandable class"modif">to users. clear when used in similar situations,

These circles <span nodes (nodes) are displayed in a matrix composed of individual circles.which are different layers, is divided into four circled layers, from the center to the peripheriy. Each of them represent a different area of information: The matrix is like a target (1) The central circle (first circle)contains a visual marker for the user (an icon that can be customized), (2)  The second circle is the area  for the expansion of expended aggregated information (domain URL or tag)  (3) The third circle shows related and co-frequent nodes the co-frequencies (i.e links related to ) to the expanded information and (4) The forth and last circle is the  area <span that contain contains external data: co-frequent nodes of a projected map, tag names) /images/ 

Users can personalize the display of their webmaps.They can change the colors of nodes, of co-frequencies links and they can personalize the central icon. In social media members are used to such practices. It enables them to mark their identity. It renders the usage more playful and more personal. it gives to the maps a more playful and personal shape.

Working with their webmaps, users create new graphics, new environments containing useful information that can be shared with others.

Different visual markers are used to represent different information and data relations (color, opacity, size, position…) /image/

2.5. Structure and representation of the system (architecture, trust and privacy) ;

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part 2 3. EXPERIMENTAL PROTOTYPE
Webmap are user -centered and users can customize their own icons // image//

Working with their webmaps, users create new graphics, new environments containing useful information that can be shared with others //image//

Different visual markers are used to represent different information and data relations (color, opacity, size, position…) //image domain mode, tag mode, node on focus ... //image//

Users can download their data into xml file and send it by mail to friends.

Buzzaar visualizes both user’s private space (represented by the visited websites) and public data (collection of all of websites visited by all registered buzzar users).

Users can decide whether they want to see co-frequencies and how (all co-frequencies, co-frequencies from or to activated node) // images //

When users want to tag their information, they have to enter the tag mode display (they leave the domain mode). All nodes that aren't tagged are gathered in the «un-tagged» category When users< create tags they can define names and colors  and move their nodes from the "un-tagged" category to the assigned tag // images //

As sait before, Merging two maps creates a new map that keeps the highest value of both. It can be used when users want to make common webmaps of common interests. Example: friends want to create their common webmap, so they merge all their personal webmaps together, one by one. The result is their common map.

Projection Example: student “A” wants to compare her sources with student “B”. Student “A” will project her map into the map of student “B” and will analyze the result showing related nodes.

In this comparison, co-frequent nodes from the projected map are displayed within third circle and have different color (in relation to the rest of the map)./image/

The network's architecture - user privacy and anonymity

<part 3 4. RELATED WORKS
Apart from Buzzaar, there are other projects that already addressed the management, display and share of users’ bookmarks and history files (in terms of knowledge management). Some of them have also used graphs and visualization to map users navigation paths, bookmarks etc.

One of the projects that we found related to Buzzaar was Internet Cartographer  (software) from Inventix Software. ref n1 (It is a software made for older Windows operating system, and seems not to be ported anymore). This software installed on a client machine was meant to manage user's navigation history. It could manage bookmarks and had tools like research by keywords and co-frequencies visualization.However, it is a client software and did not address the issue of sharing information between peers.

Since 2009, Firefox users can install Voyage ref n2, a Firefox plugin developed by Hsiao-Ting Yu. Voyage is designed to map and visualize navigation history, to provide users with an interactive tool that enables them to search into their history files. Hsiao-Ting Yu developed this tool because he was, as he explain, fed up with the long textual list of his firefox history log and since he wanted something more intuitive. He missed information on co-frequencies which could not be shown in the textual history log.

Voyage's users "travel" visually inside their history navigation map throughout a timetable. They can select a specific date, can see frequencies, co-frequencies on nodes information and Media Wall that displays multimedia files visited by. They can also integrate their twitters' tweets.

Deliciousis another social bookmarking website for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. It offer the possibility to its members to share their bookmarks with their peers. using non-hierarchical classification system of taging bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy(8).

TouchGraph Google Browser  -- ref n4, by Martin Spernau (date unknown, java application) as explained "(...)uses Google's database to determine and display the links between a URL that you enter and other pages on the web. The results are displayed in a graph that shows both inbound and outbound relationships between URLs.»(9)" «The TouchGraph Google Browser uses Google's database to determine and display the links between a URL that you enter and other pages on the web. The results are displayed in a graph that shows both inbound and outbound relationships between URLs.»(9)

...

part 4 5. CONCLUSION
As web users we spend significant time on line searching for different information s, webpages … t These actions create data that could be interesting and usefull for everybody if only we could easily access to it and give it a sense: I.e transform it in a meaningfull knowledge that we could share and explore with peers.

These data are already partially stored in our browser logs as our “navigation history” but it is hard for average users to understand and take something out of these rough textual data.

Data created by users should return to users in a form of a common knowledge that everybody can use and refer to. Each of us should be free to manipulate with, share it at their whish.-

We have created buzzaar exactly to respond to these challenges. We have designed a tool that not only transform rough data into meaningfull visual graphs but that also allow users to fully interact with it.

Users can manipulate their data, filter it tag and share it with peers.

More- Buzzaar provide the wide communtiy of web users with a public common(public) webmap made of all the links from all buzzaar users  as a common, free and shared  knowledge at free disposal.

One challenge that still need to be faced is the populartiy of the tool: the more people will use it the more interesting results will be.

However, we feel concerned with users privacy and anonymity. We don't want our tool to be used by those who would like to profile users for private needs. We have worked with the engineers of the LIA of EPFL to provide efficient answers to this issue.With their competences, we have build a tool good enough and well responding to the criteria of trust and privacy.

6. REFERENCES
Bibliography Bauwens, M., 2005., "Peer to Peer and Human Evolution: On "the P2P relational dynamic" as the premise of the next civilizational stage" (http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1)

Bauwens, M., 2005.,"The Political Economy of Peer Production",000 Days of Theory, Ctheory.net (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499)

C. Wallis, J.C., 2005., "Databases & Data Visualization: the State of the Art, Center for Embedded Networked Sensing", UCLA, Data Management Team

Klanten,R. Bourquin, S.E.N.,Tissot,T., 2010.,Data Flow: Design graphique et visualisation d'information, Gestalten, Berlin

Lau, A. Moere,A.V., 2007., "Towards a Model of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualization", IEEE International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV'07), IEEE, Zurich, Switzerland, pp. 87-92 (http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~andrew/publications/iv07.pdf)

Manovich, L.,2002.,"The Anti-Sublime Ideal in Data Art", Manovich.net (http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/data_art.doc)

Manovich,L.,2010., "What is Visualization?" Manovich.net (http://manovich.net/2010/10/25/new-article-what-is-visualization/)

"Network Collaboration: Peer To Peer As A New Way Of Living - Video Interview with Michel Bauwens", (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29/network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm)

Web-references:

"About the LIA" (http://liawww.epfl.ch/) "Aggregation", The Free Dictionnary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aggregation)

"Co-occurance" Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-occurrence)

"Creative Commons: About" (http://creativecommons.org/about)

"Data granularity", Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granularity#Computing)

"Distributed knowledge", Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_knowledge)

"Meetopia: collage webzine & digital culture" (http://meetopia.net/index.php?id=about)

"Peer-to-peer", Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer) "The commons", Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons)

"The Foundation for P2P Alternatives" (http://p2pfoundation.net/)

Visual Complexity web site (http://www.visualcomplexity.com)

"What is granularity?",Webopedia (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/G/granularity.html)

Internet Cartographer - Inventix Software

Date version 2 1999, version 2.0.1 freeware 2005

Plateform: Windows 95,98, NT

developer website Voyage, Firefox plugin

developer doc Voyage on Firefox add-ons About Delicious Delicious, Joshua Schachter, 2003 Touchgraph Google Browser - demo site and applet java

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Klanten,R. Bourquin, S.E.N.,Tissot,T., 2010.Data Flow: Design graphique et visualisation d'information, Gestalten, Berlin Manovich, L.,2002.,The Anti-Sublime Ideal in Data Art, Manovich.net Manovich,L.,2010., What is Visualization?, Jillian C. Wallis : Databases & Data Visualization: the State of the Art, Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, UCLA, Data Management Team, 2005 Andrea Lau, Andrew Vande Moere : Towards a Model of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualization , Key Centre of Design Computing & Cognition, University of Sydney, Australia Network Collaboration: Peer To Peer As A New Way Of Living - Video Interview with Michel Bauwens, http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29</network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm Michel Bauwens: Peer to Peer and Human Evolution. On "the P2P relational dynamic" as the premise of the next civilizational stage,2005;http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1 Defining P2P as the relational dynamic of distributed networks http://p2pfoundation.net/%20Defining_P2P_as_the_relational_dynamic_of_distributed_networks Michel Bauwens: The Political Economy of Peer Production, 2005, 1000 Days of Theory, Ctheory.net http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499

Webliography

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