In my presentation at this years OLA Superconference I spoke about the impact of data visualization and information aesthetics on search. I just came across a beautiful demonstration of this, Pivot from Microsoft.

…Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.

Check out Gary Flake’s presentation from this years TED conference.

I just discovered an excellent post by Alisa Leonard-Hansen (Vice Chair, Communications at the DataPortability Project) on the importance of governance models in the creation of social media strategies.

The considerations for a social media governance model are numerous: brand identity/voice/tone, internal resources, staffing and stakeholders, work-flow adjustments, escalation policies, appropriate topics of conversation and language, identity/social equity “ownership” (who does brand social equity belong to? The employee Tweeting on behalf of a brand or the brand?), legal issues and rammifciations, industry regulations, content posting policies….well you get the point. While this may seem a bit of an arduous task, creating these governance models lay a crucial foundation, and are vital to any social media–ahem, digital– strategy and long term success (and they’re actually fun to create too, believe it or not).

Explaining to someone unfamiliar with social media how to deal with and distinguish between trolls and legitimate complaints and appropriate levels of response is difficult, as the internet is a realm with a sociology of its own distinct from our everyday experience. Alisa’s example of the Rules of Engagement visual for the US Air Force provides any librarian working on social media strategy a clear and succinct means to do this.

I love attending conferences and try to squeeze in as many as possible. However, time, distance and expense have to be taken into consideration, so my options are often limited. The following are upcoming conferences I wish I could attend. If anyone out there is attending any of these, please contact me, as attending conferences vicariously is often just as entertaining.

1. ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit. I’ve mentioned the real-time web many times on this blog, and this event should produce some exciting insights.

The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit will be made up of a smart and diverse group of people. Together we will discuss the key questions, in the process creating a final agenda on-site – and in real-time! The Real-Time Web is changing so fast that no predetermined agenda of talking heads on stage can do it justice.

2. The Internet as Playground and Factory. A fascinating subject that is rarely discussed in the rush to find the next up-and-coming social media app.

Today we are arguably in the midst of massive transformations in economy, labor, and life related to digital media. The purpose of this conference is to interrogate these dramatic shifts restructuring leisure, consumption, and production since the mid-century. In the 1950s television began to establish commonalities between suburbanites across the United States. Currently, communities that were previously sustained through national newspapers now started to bond over sitcoms. Increasingly people are leaving behind televisions sets in favor of communing with — and through– their computers. They blog, comment, procrastinate, refer, network, tease, tag, detag, remix, and upload and from all of this attention and all of their labor, corporations expropriate value. Guests in the virtual world Second Life even co-create the products and experiences, which they then consume. What is the nature of this interactive ‘labor’ and the new forms of digital sociality that it brings into being?  What are we doing to ourselves?

3. Engaging Data Forum. As we enter the next phase of the web, it seems privacy will become an even more contentious issue.

The Engaging Data: First International Forum on the Application and Management of Personal Electronic Information is the launching event of the Engaging Data Initiative, which will include a series of discussion panels and conferences at MIT. This initiative seeks to address the issues surrounding the application and management of personal electronic information by bringing together the main stakeholders from multiple disciplines, including social scientists, engineers, manufacturers, telecommunications service providers, Internet companies, credit companies and banks, privacy officers, lawyers, and watchdogs, and government officials.

Wildcard. Shift Electronic Arts Festival. I firmly believe that librarians, when looking at technology and trying to divine its future direction and what it will mean for our profession, should pay greater attention to the art world, where early adopters and innovators can be found.

From the dazzling shaman of dance music Ebony Bones to electro pioneers Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius aka Cluster, from Susan Collins’ live-video broadcast from a haunted house in Britain and real-time tech-necromancy courtesy of Hamburg robotics artists F18, to seriously fathoming the borders of reality with the video medium: with “Magic. Tech-Evocations and Assumptions of Paranormal Realities” as its theme, Shift guarantees an enchantingly varied programme.

The idea of the real time web has taking on serious momentum, and is seen as a fundamental characteristic of the web’s next evolution. Here are a few real time applications that are worth keeping an eye on.

1. YourVersion. Winner of the People’s Choice Award at this years TechCrunch50, this application should certainly be of interest to librarians.

YourVersion is a personalized, real-time discovery engine that finds new, relevant content tailored to one’s interests and makes it easy to bookmark and share that content.

2. Aardvark. Aardvark is a way to get quick answers to questions using your extended social network. You can ask questions via IM or email, and the question is then passed to your friends, and friends of friends, based on what their profiles say their interests are.

3. PostRank. Based on social engagement, PostRank allows you to find the most relevant content on the web in real time that matches your specific interests.

PostRank measures engagement by analyzing the types and frequency of an audience’s interaction with online content. An item’s PostRank score represents how interesting and relevant people have found it to be. The more interesting or relevant an item is, the more work they will do to share or respond to that item so interactions that require more effort are weighted higher. PostRank scoring is based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. By collecting interaction engagement metrics in these categories the overall engagement score is calculated and the PostRank value is determined.

Wildcard. Google Wave. Tomorrow, Google will issue 100,000 invitations to preview the new application, or “personal communication and collaboration tool.”. People already believe that it will overtake Twitter in the real time game, but Google has failed in the past so we have to wait and see.

After all the Twitter articles, reports, and sociology last week I thought it might be a good idea to focus on something a little lighter. Here are three Twitter visualizations that are fun and, maybe, useful.

1. Trendsmap. This visualization tracks Twitter trends by geographical location and displays the information as a tag cloud on a Google Map, which can be sorted by a specific city or general region in real time. Clicking on a tag opens a small information box that aggregates the latest tweets, the trend history, and offers related news links and images.

2. Visible Tweets. Visible Tweets displays a stream of tweets on any trend you choose. They are displayed one at a time on a colourful background, with beautiful transitions between tweets. Designed to display tweets in a public place, a perfect addition to any twittered conference.

3. Trend Tracker. While the others focus on place or aesthetics, Trend Tracker allows you to see trending topics by geography and time of day. It is also possible to see a trend topic by location on a world map over 24 hours, which means you can follow trends as they travel around the globe.

Wildcard. TwittEarth. Displays a geo-located tweet, accompanied by a very bizarre icon, at ten second intervals. Useless but strangely seductive.