Varna’s Mind

By Stephen Few. June 27th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

Al,

In response to your question, I would be happy to suggest alternatives to Microsoft’s data visualization capabilities, but you might want to browse the many articles and blog topics in which I have already proposed alternatives for a range of data visualization needs. If you would rather not take the time to see what I have already written, please describe what you would like to accomplish and I would be happy to suggest software that you might want to consider.

Regarding Microsoft bashing, I critique data visualizating software in general, and don’t hesitate to point out problems in any vendor’s products. If you read my work, you will see that this is the case. In fact, I have pointed out problems in the software of certain other vendors much more often than I have done so regarding Microsoft. I tend to respond to press releases and other forms of marketing when they make claims about the the visualization capabilities of their software that are not accurate or that promote bad practices. In this particular case, I responded to the release of Microsoft’s video about the company’s visual analysis vision.

You might be interested in knowing that there are good folks at Microsoft who agree with my perspective and are working desperately to get the company to adopt a better understanding of data visualization and better practices.

Steve

Nearly two decades after he invented the World Wide Web, British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee has admitted that "forward slashes" in Internet addresses "were a mistake."

Claiming the forward slashes (//) at the front of a Web address was pointless and unnecessary, Sir Tim confessed at a recent talk in the U.S. that at the time of creating the WWW, he had failed to predict how much effect what he was producing would have on people now.

“When I designed the URL, this thing which starts http://, the slash was to indicate we’re actually starting at the top, not starting down at the next slash. Really, if you think about it, it doesn’t need the slashes. I could have designed it not to have the slashes. Boy, now people on the radio are calling it ‘backslash backslash’

“People are having to use that finger so much. Look at all the paper and trees that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years — not to mention the human labour and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes,” the media quoted him as saying.

He said these while speaking at a symposium organised by Finland’s Technology Academy Foundation, and hosted in the Finnish Embassy in Washington DC, on the future of technology.

Sir Tim invented the Web while working at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland 20 years ago. In his spare time, he developed a revolutionary idea of linking pages which he named the World Wide Web, and launched the first Website in 1991.

Keywords: World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, forward slashes, //, Internet address