DiggMapper: Visualizing Digg data using Treemaps

This is definitely work in progress. I ported my treemap classes to the Flex framework and created this quick app that reads data from Digg. It doesnt automatically load data so click on one of the links above to get started. Rollover the rectangles to preview the story and click on them to launch the link. I just love the visualization since it makes so much more sense of the number of diggs than just the number on next to the story. For example the image below just underlines the importance of Halo3 in the gaming community so much more than seeing the number in a list (click to enlarge)

You can try the DiggMapper here. Its still incomplete but if you have any suggestions, please leave them as a comment

Author: Arpit Mathur

Arpit Mathur is a Principal Engineer at Comcast Labs where he is currently working on a variety of topics including Machine Learning, Affective Computing, and Blockchain applications. Arpit has also worked extensively on Android and iOS applications, Virtual Reality apps as well as with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML and Ruby on Rails. He also spent a couple of years in the User Experience team as a Creative Technologist. View all posts by Arpit Mathur

6 thoughts on “DiggMapper: Visualizing Digg data using Treemaps”

Ibrahim says:

February 12, 2007 at 3:43 am

Clicked there and nothing appeared. I use Firefox

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Dana G says:

February 16, 2007 at 1:00 am

Heya, Know you;re still working on it but u asked… the rollover still pops up on the right side of the pointer when I go to the right side of the screen – can’t read it all the juicy opening details of the open-to-all gmail story on the bottom right. Had to click. oh metrics are playing in my head (sung to raindrops are falling on my head) and that I will take as a sign I should go-to SLEEP. night!

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arpit says:

February 18, 2007 at 3:26 pm

Ibrahim: I had moved the swf for a while and hadnt updated the url so sorry abt that.
Dana: yeah i know…havent looked at the mx Tootip class to find out if I can cleanly position the tips the way flex components do by default.

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Uma Konappalli says:

April 2, 2007 at 11:38 pm

Hi..

I am a Information Design Student from India. I was researching for some material regarding TreeMaps and I came across your blog. The DiggMapper application interested me. I do have a few questions related to the colours used.. I found that there was a repitition in the colours used in one particular category results. Is this to imply sub categorization in one category.. And if so.. what was the basis of the choice of colours used.. Please throw some light to this topic..

Regards
Uma

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arpit says:

April 3, 2007 at 10:05 am

Hi Uma,

Right now there is no logic to the colors used. They are actually randomly picked from an array of colors. The goal of the code in this post was to demonstrate the algorithm that automatically computes areas based on weights. Using category and subcategory information to determine color values would definitely move DiggMapper closer to an application status than the experiment it is right now 🙂

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