What practical things can be done with wandora?

[qoilho]

I have been playing with Wandora, looking at the WiKi description and the FAQ of the creators and I am still not sure what practical use it actually has. I realize that it can extract data but can it simplify it? or is it only able to visualize it as a bunch of relationships in 3D? If that is the case, what actual benefit could a person or organization gain from it? That is, apart from the abstract idea of relationships in general?

For example, you could find network hubs, but Facebook shows us the network hubs by the number of people known by an individual. There might be strange clusters that could be described, but can we say much more about them?

I would think that people, companies, and other organizations do not process data this way and have a lot of trouble working with it in this format. While I understand that a new form of understanding data might be useful, is there any proof that this form benefits any analysis? Is there a similar program that is actually in use in industry, government or NGOs?

Even if finding strange subnetworks could be beneficial, can this be done with all kinds of data?

[akivela]

Hello Qoilho

I kindly thank you for your interest in Wandora. What is Wandora good for? Well, that is a good question.

I have always though Wandora as an information-sampler. A sampler in music is a device that can capture a piece of audio data and play it later on. Now, I think Wandora a kind of sampler that can capture a piece of information and represent it in various formats later on. Audio samplers can usually mix multiple audio samples together and this applies to Wandora also. Wandora can combine information from various sources into a seamless mixture. Instead of generating all information manually (i.e. playing real instruments) the information-worker can now build the required information-composition by "capturing" information in various WWW sources. If you now think what has been the effect of audio samplers to music industry and music making, I assume you rapidly realize the potential of information-samplers and Wandora.

I agree current information and data processing methods are not similar to those expressed above. However, this may change when we build more and more intellectual realms to current and upcoming WWW services such as YouTube, Flickr, Delicious etc.

Although your text suggests, Wandora is not really a visualization tool. Also, we have not yet implemented Facebook extractor, albeit it might be interesting.

Kind Regards,
Aki
Wandora Team

[akivela]

Hello Qoilho

I read through you post once again and figured out that I didn't probably answer all your questions in my previous reply.

First read about projects we have been using Wandara to:
http://www.wandora.org/wandora/wiki/index.php?title=Real-life_projects

About simplifying extracted information. Wandora has some tools that modify topics and associations in a way you could consider simplifying, even refining. However, it is always user's responsibility to interpret what topics and associations actually mean and then act according to the interpretation. What Wandora can do is to support user's will as well as possible. Thus we have included Wandora a large set of tools used to modify topics and associations. If tools are used in right context, the information in Wandora is really refining.

I already answered the question about 3D visualization. I would not consider Wandora as visualization software.

About similar programs. Well, you could think all Topic Maps and RDF editors similar to Wandora. See Protege (http://protege.stanford.edu) for example.

About the usage of similar applications in industry, government and NGOs. Look at the supporter list of Protege (see http://protege.stanford.edu/aboutus/aboutus.html). Wandora is also used in Finnish art museums to publish artwork related information (see http://kokoelmat.fng.fi/wandora/w?action=gen&lang=en).

Cheers,
Aki / Wandora Team