.

.

I am sure you have read the paper entitled something like "The Magical Number Seven, Give or Take Two." That paper addressed limitations of short term memory. Having just attended your course in Houston, where I heard your comments about the number of links on various websites, I wonder what you think about the number of items to include on (gasp!) a single slide during a presentation. Thank you.

Might you be willing to share your thoughts on the appropriate sonification/audification of multidimensional data, vis a vis facilitating researchers' ability to navigate and "mine" complex and otherwise hard-to-comprehend data?

(The following book might be a Volume I of such an investigation. Schafer, R. M. The Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf, 1977. )

With Gratitude and Interest,

Ross Mohan

I have recently become interested in creating timelines on the Internet. Surely using this great new medium (the Net) there is a revolutionary way of presenting timeline data. So I have been searching around the Internet to see what I can find, and alas, it appears that most timelines are simply a list of dates with the corresponding events. It seems to me that this is a boring way of presenting data and does not harness the power of the Net.

What would you consider the best way of presenting timeline data on the Internet? Is Flash the answer so we can make timelines more interactive? Or has the Internet not evolved enough yet to present data in a new and revolutionary manner?

My early attempts have led me to attempt a Flash solution. What I have done so far can be viewed at (www.websonix.ca/tim/index.html). This is a beginning, but I can't help but believe that there is so much more that could be done.

We have an e-newsletter program, and at the bottom of each online article, we have begun surveying readers with one simple question. How informative/useful was this article? They rate their answer on scale from 1-5 (obviously could lead many ratings to land on 3 as neutral). We just started this program so anticipate a flood of data beginning to pour in over the next few months. I feel increasingly hesitant over the "importance" of this data when considering my colleagues' desires to drive future articles and initiatives from the results.

What information is out there that can inform me further on the validity of this kind of data gathering and/or how to analyze this data with a big grain of salt?

How do you pronounce your last name?

I recently discovered the book "Atlas of Oregon 2ND Edition" by William Loy.

You can see it here.

In my opinion, this is one of the finest examples of information design that I have ever seen in print. Page after page continued to delight me. I am wondering what others, Edward Tufte, in particular, think of it.

I attended a Tufte seminar this week (excellent!), and there found out about the book Cartographic Relief Presentation.

I have always had an interest in cartography, and as an architect I have done a lot of site plans using basic cartographic techniques.

Unfortunately, I can't locate a copy. It is out of print, and even www.bookfinder.com comes up empty.

I'd really like to obtain a copy, even just as a loan to read it. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

-dp-