I serendipitously ran across Liveplasma today while reading a news story on CNET|News.com. The news story had a “big picture” section with a network diagram showing the relationships between stories, topics and companies. Clicking on any node refocused the diagram to reveal additional relationships. The concept was interesting, although the content appeared to be woefully incomplete and out-of-date. But I was intrigued enough to click the “powered by liveplasma” link, where I discovered a much more appropriate application — the liveplasma discovery engine.
The engine concept is sound, and on the liveplasma website more appropriately applied to information that isn’t subject to change as frequently as news. In this case, music and movies. You begin by typing the name of an artist, band, movie, director or actor, and network nodes (designated by colored bubbles) begin to glide around the screen, arranging themselves by affinity to your search. Click on any node to change the focus of the network.
I was impressed with the accuracy of the links, although it’s not flawless. Looking at Jethro Tull, for example, produced several duplicate networked relationships to two Ian Andersons, two ELPs and two Martin Barres. But the relationship it generated I generally agreed with. As a method for discovering related information, Liveplasma offers an interesting paradigm that could find application in other areas. Try it and let me know if you agree.
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