interface : petri

The servers that the database shows us are to a large extent inaccessible, and as such "interesting" because they say something about the larger picture of the web, but not very "interesting" as singular web sites. This interface aims to aid you in finding clusters of sites that are "interesting" in themselves. Each pixel is a link to a web site. The links/sites are organized according to what networks they belong to. When you click on a pixel that takes you to something special, the pixels around it might have something in common and thus be interesting as well. Every time you (and everyone else using the interface) requests a server by clicking on the map, the pixel you click on gets lighter. The lighter links thus indicate that they have been selected more often than the darker ones. If you see several light links next to each other, it might indicate that someone found something interesting in an area and continued to explore it. Steve Dietz pointed out the issue of self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to collaborative information filtering*. In some cases it can be seen as problematic that "the most visited pages become the most visited pages". This interface can be seen as an attempt to expose and utilize the psychologies behind that "problem".

* http://www.walkerart.org/jevbratt/

Color Codes:

Network
First server in network
Server requested less.
Server requested more.

Access Color Codes:

Accessible
Not Accessible
Page Not Found / Redirecting
Remote Server Error / Unknown


*Colors indicate response to the software robots probing a server, it might be the response you will get when accessing a server.

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