About this Blogsphere:

This blogsphere attempts to capture, catalog and share resources relating to visual perception of information. It is about a world mostly dealing with Physical (Touch, Taste, See/Sight, Smell and Hear) and sometimes Metaphysical (and that is none-of-the-above category). Physical, for instance, touch (e.g., feel, felt, found), look and visualization, is here with an attempt to combine verbal, vocal and visual--to synchronously see, hear, share and do much more. Interestingly, in order to visualize one does not need special skills, competencies, etc. It is all about common sense, especially with human visualizations. In short, "information is in the eye of the beholder." Continue reading much more all-ado-about this Blogosphere

Akbani is a Cutchi Memon family name.

June 02, 2006

Visual Calendar and Information Visualization Contextualized

What is a visual calendar?
It is simply a visual show or snapshot of what have you on the calendar.

Sample Images Google Yahoo AlltheWeb MSN

There are many ways (as well as tools) to add visual content to calendars. In the following is a list of resources on the subject.

  • Enabling rich human-agent interaction for a calendar scheduling agent, by Andrew Faulring and Brad A. Myers, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems archive, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, 2005 Details. [ABSTRACT: The RhaiCAL system provides novel visualizations and interaction techniques for interacting with an intelligent agent, with an emphasis on calendar scheduling. After an agent interprets natural language containing meeting information, a user can easily correct mistakes using RhaiCAL's clarification dialogs, which provide the agent with feedback to improve its performance. When an agent proposes actions to take on the user's behalf, it can ask the user to confirm them. RhaiCAL uses novel visualizations to present the proposal to the user and allow them to modify the proposal, and informs the agent of the user's actions in a manner that supports long-term learning of the user's preferences. We have designed a high-level XML-based language that allows an agent to express its questions and proposed actions without mentioning user interface details, and that enables RhaiCAL to generate high-quality user interfaces].
  • Developing calendar visualizers for the information visualizer, Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology archive, Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, by Jock D. Mackinlay, et al. 1994 Details. [ABSTRACT: The increasing mass of information confronting a business or an individual have created a demand for information management applications. Time-based information, in particular, is an important part of many information access tasks. This paper explores how to use 3D graphics and interactive animation to design and implement visualizers that improve access to large masses of time-based information. Two new visualizers have been developed for the Information Visualizer: 1) the Spiral Calendar was designed for rapid access to an individual's daily schedule, and 2) the Time Lattice was designed for analyzing the time relationships among the schedules of groups of people. The Spiral Calendar embodies a new 3D graphics technique for integrating detail and context by placing objects in a 3D spiral. It demonstrates that advanced graphics techniques can enhance routine office information tasks. The Time Lattice is formed by aligning a collection of 2D calendars. 2D translucent shadows provide views and interactive access to the resulting complex 3D object. The paper focuses on how these visualizations were developed. The Spiral Calendar, in particular, has gone through an entire cycle of development, including design, implementation, evaluation, revision and reuse. Our experience should prove useful to others developing user interfaces based on advanced graphics].
  • Greg Judelman. Knowledge Visualization, Information Visualization, Problems with Current Information Interfaces and more...
  • Calendaring websites reviewed, Journal of Samantha, May 31, 2006

    When in doubt, Ask the Expert:
    Edward Tufte: Ask ET forum - Topic: Visual Calendar

    Applications Side***:
  • Give your website visitors a Visual Calendar of your events, not just text announcements: mini-calendar
  • Sked Visual Calendar [Sked is an effort to develop a visual calendar/scheduling program with the primary interface being text-based (i.e. it runs on a terminal). There seems to be a plethora of strictly graphical calendar programs available, but a relative dearth of text-based ones. Sked attempts to fill that void. The interface principles of Sked are very similar to those of Mutt and Vim, primarily emphasizing efficiency and speed. Indeed, many of the features of those programs will be copied wholesale. Anyone who uses and enjoys Vim or Mutt should feel at home using Sked.
  • Visual Calendar Planner v5.0 Shareware
  • See also from my other blog: Multifaith Calendars - Visualize the Festivals, Feasts, Fasts, Festoons, etc

  • ***Disclaimer: These tools are not tested for quality, applicability and effectiveness. Try it yourself.

    1 comment:

    Anonymous said...

    CALENDAR 2006