Wikipedia Explorer beta
I was over in Windsor recently chatting with the guys at DotNet Solutions who have done some pretty cool work to date on WPF, Vista and Office. Whilst chatting with their CTO, Tim Scarfe, I suggested it would be cool to do some kind of 3D explorer view of Wikipedia that used Windows Presentation Foundation. Tim kinda went "umm, yeah that'd be cool" and said he may have a play with it. Needless to say he has and what he's come up with is fantastic. He explains it way better than I can
"Using the latest WPF technologies, Dot Net Solutions has crafted an application to browse Wikipedia which we have dubbed Wikipedia Explorer. Compared to the standard text only view of articles, Wikipedia Explorer deals with and displays the relationships between the articles.
With the display of the data, the application allows 3 forms of view. An initial Document layout displays the article's content as it would be displayed in Wikipedia itself. The real value of the application however, is in the extra 3DExplorer and Network view modes.Within the 3DExplorer mode, the main article is displayed in the centre of the screen with all linked articles shown around in a helix structure for quick navigation. Scrolling through the articles is as easy as scrolling with your mouse wheel."
What you get is a VERY powerful visualization of the flat by hypertexted Wikpedia. The 3D explorer is funky but the Network mode is just awesome. Put in a search term, switch to Network mode and watch the app build out the web of links before your very eyes. I think Tim has done a stunning job here but you can check for yourself as Wikipedia Explorer can be run as a ClickOnce application (note that you do need to install the .NET 3.0 redistributable package)
thanks Tim - a great pre-Xmas present....and I also just realized you helped build Oxfam Unwrapped. tres cool.