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Co-presenting Search Results on Timelines and Maps

In several previous posts, I've looked at the way timelines are being used to display search results, as well as timeline and map combinations, as well as demonstrating a dual Google maps and timelines search page:

Whilst I was searching for Google maps circle overlay scripts for the previous post on plotting foot and mouth exclusion zones, I came across this postpaper on Extending Mashups to Visualize Patterns in Temporal Data.

Many datasets are now published as streams of time-stamped, geo-encoded events using GeoRSS. To understand patterns within this class of data, we have taken ideas from mashups and extended them to develop new visual components that present live geospatial data in novel ways. The components are interactive, live, linked and contain many novel features for understanding temporal and geospatial patterns in event data. The components are light-weight, thin client, Web 2.0 AJAX technology and are suitable for analyzing both on-line streaming and off-line static datasets. Our work expands traditional geospatial mashups to include timeline, time wheel, and graph mashups for real-time time streaming data.

The paper describes several interesting ways of combining geo- and temportal data, and is well worth a read. Here's a second, related paper: Extending Mashups to Visualize Patterns in Temporal Data.

Quite by chance, my last feed reading session of the day turned up a post on SEO by the SEA about Google Timelines, Fact Maps, and Fact Relevance Rankings:

DISPLAYING FACTS ON A LINEAR GRAPH
A set of objects having facts is established. Facts of objects having positions in a order are identified. Some facts explicitly describe the positions in the linear order, while are facts do not explicitly describe the positions. The facts are presented in the order on a linear graph, such as a timeline. Facts of the objects describing geographic positions are presented on a map.

United States Patent Application 20070179952

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out...

Posted by ajh59 at August 4, 2007 02:02 AM