Thinkmap Prototypes
Explorations Developed Using the Thinkmap SDK.
These pages contain a series of explorations using Thinkmap with publicly available data sources.
Thinkmap Supports a Variety of Data Types.
The examples on these pages use a variety of data types and datasources. Some use quantitative data — the US Budget Browser — others look at time-series data — the Patent Explorer or the Movies of the 1980's application.
Thinkmap Can Connect to a Variety of Data Sources.
One of the strengths of Thinkmap is that you can seamlessly pull from multiple data source; these prototypes take advantage of this ability. For example, the Patent Explorer uses a combination of a SQL database (MySQL) for the relationships, and a publicly available web service (provided by Google) for the names and for search. The Movies of the 1980's and the Family Tree use a flat-file XML data source, and others use SQL databases.
With Thinkmap, you can combine multiple components.
As you look through the examples, you'll find that they use a variety of Thinkmap components and techniques to visualize the underlying data. A good Thinkmap application is a give-and-take between the user and the data. In these applications, you can play with the data, adjusting sliders or clicking on nodes, to see different bits of information. A good example of this is the US Budget Browser, in which you can change the years that are compared, or use interactive search to explore the data.