The objective of Blog Visualization (BVZ) is to enable anyone to create a visual map of the blogs they link to either throguh a blogroll or through references in their blog. There are two parts to BVZ 1) Is a caching crawler that on first request builds in an object database a map of the links in the blog specified. This is a service that is accessed through a URL and is completely indepandant of the second part of the the software which is 2) The visualization software that is built on DreamFactory this requires a plugin to the browser, the plugin is downloaded the first time only very much like flash.
One of the interesting attributes of creating well defined services is how easy it is to distribute the display code and have it completely separate from the business logic. For the blog mapping software the HTML code below will create a new display widget. The blog displayed on startup in the URL in bold. This example is for Jon Udell's weblog, it does take a little time to load as he has a lot of links but it is fun to be able to naviage all his links in a visual manner.
This is an example of the HTML code for a page to create a blog map
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<title>DreamFactory 6.34 Project: Viewer</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</HEAD>
<BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
<object
classid="clsid:226906C8-B911-11D5-82A3-0000F81A655B"
codebase="http://www.dreamfactory.com/codebase/dfacactx.cab#Version=6,34,0,1"
id="dfacinst"
border=0
width=100%
height=100%>
<param
name="openfile"
value="http://www.mcdowall.com/dfProject/viewer.dfac?root=
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/">
<embed
type="application/dreamfactory"
pluginspage="http://www.dreamfactory.com/codebase/winplug.exe"
width=100%
height=100%
openfile="http://www.mcdowall.com/dfProject/viewer.dfac">
<embed>
</object>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Anyone can add this code to their blog and provide a new metaphor for navigating their neighbourhood. As I add more features they will be delivered on demand i.e. no need to update software everything is delivered out of the network.
Anyone should feel free to add a BVZ image to their blog site. The objective is to enable sharing and facilitate information sharing.