Comments on: Many eyes make heavy work http://www.drmaciver.com/2009/05/many-eyes-make-heavy-work/ Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:56:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Robert Kosara http://www.drmaciver.com/2009/05/many-eyes-make-heavy-work/#comment-867 Robert Kosara Thu, 28 May 2009 13:37:21 +0000 http://www.drmaciver.com/?p=547#comment-867 That data set is not all that large, but it's probably too much for a Java or Flash applet running in a browser (which are very memory-constrained). I agree that it should fail more gracefully, though, that is the one thing I would really fault them for. (It also shouldn't crash your browser, but that's a browser issue, not the applet's fault - the browser should be able to contain a crashing applet) Many Eyes's focus is more on trying out new things in terms of visualization (they do a lot of text analysis with visualization) and crowdsourcing/interaction. Most datasets people want to play with are probably in the dozens or hundreds of data points, with a few dimensions, so scale is just not an issue for the majority of their users. The whole thing is still an experiment really, more of a prototype than a production service. It's hosted on alphaworks, after all ... That data set is not all that large, but it’s probably too much for a Java or Flash applet running in a browser (which are very memory-constrained). I agree that it should fail more gracefully, though, that is the one thing I would really fault them for. (It also shouldn’t crash your browser, but that’s a browser issue, not the applet’s fault – the browser should be able to contain a crashing applet)

Many Eyes’s focus is more on trying out new things in terms of visualization (they do a lot of text analysis with visualization) and crowdsourcing/interaction. Most datasets people want to play with are probably in the dozens or hundreds of data points, with a few dimensions, so scale is just not an issue for the majority of their users.

The whole thing is still an experiment really, more of a prototype than a production service. It’s hosted on alphaworks, after all …

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