Visual Thesaurus
Every once in a while, you come across an app, and think to yourself—"sweet fancy Moses...this thing was made for me". Well maybe not in those words, but you know what I'm getting at. I recently noticed that there was a site linking back to me called Visual Thesaurus. But before I even noticed this, Uber writer Ann Handley included this tool in her 8 Writing Tools post over at Marketing profs. So forgive me Ann—I just got around to messing with it today (hey, give me a break—you see how much I blog). :)
Here's what I'm loving about this little gift to writers.
The Visual Part
OK, you all know that I'm visual as hell. So this little gem of a Thesaurus lets you type in a word and then visualizes related words in an organically mapped out way (see brand example above). It's a great way to digest all of your options at a glance.
I Need a Digital Thesaurus
I'm at the point where I really need to start using a Thesaurus. some people actually think I am a writer. This frightens me because I have no training in writing and really don't even know the basics. It's pretty much all done from instinct and the gut. Which is fine, but will only get you so far. I also need the digital part—I don't care for paper as much as I used to. I like the convenience of digital along with options to e-mail and print if I feel the need to have something in my hand.
I like Good Design
This thing was just designed well—that's all there is to it. It's packs a lot of functionality in a small space and it didn't take me long to figure out how to master it. I really liked the panels on the side which offered up nouns, adjectives and verbs.
Verdict:
Yeah, I'll subscribe. At under 20 bucks a year, this thing is a bargain. So in a few months if you feel like the writing here got just a little better—you'll know why.
Hooray ... I have loved this visual thesaurus for some time. It is a great way of seeing the connection betweens words and ideas ... and I have found it a great tool for ideation. And on a slow computer it is even more fun ... you can see connections suddenly pop onto screen ... like ideas suddenly bursting into life.
Now of course we will be looking out for new "fancy" words creeping into your vocabulary!
Posted by: Gavin Heaton | Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 11:16 PM
I'll be sure to do so in a surreptitious fashion.
;)
Posted by: DA | Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 11:21 PM
Wow! Fun, functionality and good design indeed. The big difference with more powerful but poorly designed applications. For an example just have a look at this digital thesaurus of French synonyms (CRISCO's at University of Caen) that generates semantic maps showing the connections and the spaces of related words.
http://elsap1.unicaen.fr/cgi-bin/cherches.cgi
Posted by: Rudy Buhagiar | Friday, September 22, 2006 at 05:55 AM
If you were a web site, David, you'd *be* Visual Thesaurus.
Posted by: Ann Handley | Friday, September 22, 2006 at 10:29 AM
i love VT. it has come in very handy in naming a few products. i love the interactivty of the tool.
a similar app would be cool showing the relationships between bloggers in the sphere.
Posted by: Paul Marobella | Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 02:32 PM
Uhmmm, David where have you been? This software has been around for a long time...
Posted by: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 08:59 PM
The Visual Thesaurus is an example of a Semantic network studied in Cognitive Psychology. Another example of this concept can be found at http://labs.digg.com/swarm.This site is the R&D development arm of the social-bookmarking site digg.com. The visualization shows what thousands of people are bookmarking in real time.
Posted by: John | Monday, September 25, 2006 at 10:15 AM
Piggybacking on Fillipo's message, here is an Amazon node courtesy of Takayuki Fukatsu:
http://amaznode.fladdict.net/
Dynamic mapping of related user purchases and shopping behavior. Yum.
Posted by: Ryan | Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 06:26 PM