Deeplinking

I listened to a Jon Udell podcast with David Huynh regarding Huynh’s Freebase Parallax project a while back but it’s something you really have to see in action to appreciate. I just saw it in action and now I appreciate.

Freebase Parallax is an interface for browsing related sets of data on Freebase, a Wikipedia-like database built on a semantic web foundation. Parallax uses faceted navigation to make it easy to jump from one set of data to another related set of data and see the underlying connections.

David’s demo gets the idea across best:

I spent some time using Parallax to explore the influence node on Freebase, which attempts to capture the influences of notable people (and has led to some fun apps). Here are some of James Joyce’s biggest influences, mapped by place of birth:

Anyone who’s spent time puzzling over Finnegans Wake knows that Joyce was influenced by Giambattista Vico, an 18th-century Italian philosopher/historian/rhetorician/etymologist/jurist whom Joyce said made his imagination grow. But who influenced Vico? Here’s a timeline of those responsible:

There’s more to explore where that came from.