oo Tool ooooo Synopsis oooooo Links ooooo Aplications oo

>Tool

CASUAL is a tool that wants to be another way to have a glance at the reality. CASUAL is just a way to concentrate present contents, it uses public API & homemade parser to get contents from the bigger sensitive containers like wikipedia, google images to any other personal one. It is a multilingual tool.
CASUAL includes a set of web scripts that drives us to the idea of random realities, creating a unique media contents landscape on demand. With Casual anyone can visualize and browse indexed and semantic multi-media contents.
CASUAL is a kind of black hole for the contents anyone wants to get. The contents could be text and images right now, but audio and video could be also available. It also will allow multi-visualisations managing views: ordered, landscape, constallation, etc. CASUAL visualisations are a cocktail of definitions, related tags, pictures and similars.
Technically, CASUAL is a cgi perl script and simple DHTML cross-browser compatible that produces an standarized XTML transational. I strongly recommend the use of cpan modules. CASUAL has been developed in the context of the common memory project.

Tags: casual visualization, conceptual landsacapes, multiviewsalization, tagcloud, contents concentrator, visualization, non-hierarquical, reality-like, tagcloud, semantic, folksonomy, info-sensitivity, random representations, knowledge path, internet 2.0, interface.

>Synopsis

>> Aims and Reasons behind the development of CASUAL:

CASUAL wants to give a new, simple and direct way to fly around concepts,ideas and news. CASUAL is based on disorder, like reality. Most of visualization systems want to give you an ordered-clean look of reality, a 1-dimension and metaphorical result. Casual is not against classic visualizations, it just wants to give another way to read/see/get the results of our searches. We spend a lot of time searching, with Casual it is possible to learn more during the search process and discover a lot of possibilities behind any word or concept. In the Internet 2.0 age, the quality of the contents that appropriate software pushes into our desktops or email inbox is growing up fast. It means that the old problem about information overflow comes back again, but with a newer face with higher quality. As always, we cannot reach every content we are interested in. The CASUAL project explores this random parameter on the pathway to the contents that we are reading everyday. CASUAL is a free tool created using free software. It is available for downloading using subversion.

>> Which kind of data can be visualized with CASUAL?

CASUAL allows different formats of data to be visualised. Right now it allows to represent text and images but it is possible to represent video and sound. CASUAL is oriented to bigger sensitive containers of data such as google, wikipèdia, indymedia or similars. But is also usefull for any local or personal data base. As it works, mainly, as a browser it is very useful for semantic search and analysis.

>> How does it works?

1- Start the game writting a query like in google or wikipedia as you do usually.
2- The results is a random cocktel of: Definitions + Related tags + Pictures
Depending on your query you'll get more or less popular concept landscapes
3- With the IMAGES you can interact:
click + drag & drop, to move the images > one click to put the image above others > doubleclick to open the web source in a new window
4- The DEFINITION (bellow the form), the words links to definition source
-> permanent link for this casualization.
-> bookmark a casualization in your delicious account.
5- The words soup or TAGCLOUD are words related to your query from wikipedia. They have 3 options:
The word itself links to a new casual search using the clicked word or expression and inviting you to walk through conceptual paths
-> links to related source in Wikipedia
-> click + drag & drop, to move the words
6- You can compare concepts looking for more that one. Results will appear with several colors for each word from your query.

Orientation v/s classification: The user has to give a semantic location to the resource. This is why the visual interface gives points of reference. It is a rather more influential approach in the sense that subjects (users) will be taking a stance and not just clicking on an option. There are degrees of approximation to each concept or locator

You can add casual to your firefox search engines
To contact me

>> How it has been developed

Technically, CASUAL is a cgi perl script and simple DHTML cross-browser compatible that produces an standarized XTML transational. I strongly recommend the use of cpan modules. Casual is made by Jaume Nualart (started january06') with friendly and nice designs from: Anna Sala. And the help and opinions from: Nuria Verges, Alex Hache, Alejandra Perez, Yves Degoyon & the rest of team of Memory Project. Casual is part of the Memory Project. CASUAL can be freely downloaded using subversion.

>Links

CASUAL in infoesthetics
Nonhierarchical representations, "La realitat no és un llistat"
Everything about how to use subversion here
About wikipedia

>Aplications

It has been applied to different information containers such as google, indymedia, indymedia barcelona, flickr, wikipedia, straddle3, riereta, lastfm and altermundo. Any information included at any of those containers can be visualised with CASUAL. CASUAL can be easily applied to any other kind of information container. Any project that has introduced information in internet or at any of those already connected information containers, is able to use CASUAL to produce visualisations of its information by casualising from a word or a sentence of words.