In a previous post, Visualizing Maps: Google Analytics maps, we saw how Google Analytics maps render when extruded from their context and/or seen as a black & white image.

USA states?

Looking at the USA map where users origin is highlighted darkening the relevant state, the first thing that stands out is you have to know the state name just looking at the map. If this is, or should be, a quite easy task for an American reader, things are not so obvious for someone from Europe or somewhere else. If is it true that you have the detailed list of the states, together with their relevant figures, in a table just under the map image, is it also true that if you just look at the map (as it would be in the case you take the map alone to insert it in a custom layout for printing/slide show) it's not so immediate to find out the state name.

Are Subconscious Files the origin of Tag Clouds?

This is what the Wikipedia entry for Tag Cloud suggests.

From Douglas Coupland best-seller Microserfs, what could be the first tag cloud, ante-litteram.

My computer's subconscious files continue still to surprise me. Who would have known that these are the words my machine wanted to speak? Well, actually, I know that it's me speaking through the computer, sort of like those really quiet guys who go all nuts when you give them a wooden puppet - ventriloquists - and these aspects of their personalities you didn't even know existed start screaming out.

The first Tag Cloud?

• Welcome to Macintosh
• Carl's Jr.
• Gore-Tex®
• gray metallic Saabs
• Barry Diller KISS
• mini-bars ads for pearls outer space
• manufacture dungeons
• magazine scent strips
• Bell Atlantic
• phone jacks
• F-16
• Calvin Klein
• bourgeois decay images
• Upload
• Sparkletts
• frequent flyer points Oscar de la Renta minimum wage
• flame broiled
• switchbox
• the DMV
• MiG-29
• Han Solo
• Download
• Drive
• Tori Spelling
• Advil
• Rosslyn You jerk
• Kotex
• Langley
• Lee Press-ons

Microserfs
Douglas Coupland. Harpercollins, 1995.