nundroo

Blogocarta™ Explained

Every blog and their mother have a blogroll in their sidebar. A blogroll is nothing more than a collection of personal (or other) web sites that the authors read regularly or recommend. Usually they are displayed as links. I thought I would implement a different system, based on geographic locations — because ultimately the web has no borders.

The concept and inspiration

The concept is pretty simple: build a map and show all the people that are on your blogroll. The thing will be powered by Flash and XML. The idea was sort of stole form the folks at Computer Love. Their map is much more complex and detailed, with a zillion functionalities. I plan to improve Blogocarta™ a lot in the coming months. The obvious problem currently is the fact that some people live in the same city, such as Seattle (to Mike Davidson: this will be fixed, you are on my blogroll.) I am still working on getting the XML to work properly.

I doubt that Blogocarta™ will be updated very soon. I am rather busy currently and it is not a top priority at the moment. But it is a fun little project related to interaction design. Things are definitvely less than perfect in the current version. Below is a list of plans and future improvements.

What to expect in the future

Make the damn thing more usable — it is just too small currently.
Fully powered by an external XML file.
Fix the problem where bloggers live in the same city.
Eventually the SWF file can be distributed to be used on different (external) blogs. If it is powered by an external XML file bloggers can create their own and have their very own version of Blogocarta™. Upload the 2 files and you are ready to go.
Build in interactivity. It should be possible to indicate if a blog has been updated within the last 24 hours. XML can handle this. I have to dig into it to find out how that will work.

Some final notes

Is it me or could I have called this thing Blogomerica™? Building this things made me realize that the US are still making things happen in the high technology business. This is not a bad thing of course, but a little more European influence would not hurt. Check your own blogroll. See? Crazy stuff. The web is worldwide, but that is about it. This is not something to worry about per se. If Europe wants to place itself more prominently on the map they will have to work for it.

Remember that this is a personal web site — its content does not reflect the position or opinion of my respective employers or academic institutions.

Syndication — RSS 2.0 XML Atom 0.3 Feed