Topix.net Conversation Map

February 15th, 2006

I’ve always been a big fan of Topix after being introduced to the service from Gary Price. Check out what they introduced today:

“[W]e plotted the local Topix discussions on a map of the US (actually rendered directly from our TIGER/Line article geo-categorization KB) and it looked pretty cool. You can click on a dot and see the message threads within a 60 mile radius of that spot. We added color/size variation to indicate the volume of posts in a locality, and how recent they are.

So far this is just for the US, we will have to do one for the non-US forums on our site next.”

I have never visited the forums before on Topix (not a forums guy, but Barbie is a forums gal - I call her the “queen of the mommy forums” - and she might like this). So, I entered my zipcode and I can see what is being discussed within 60 miles of my town. Wow. Now, I might actually become a forums guy. I love local chatter.

A few things suggestions for the Topix folks:

+ Gimme an RSS feed for new content posted on this list. Right now, I can only get a feed for my town.

+ Let me decide on how many miles from my town I want to look at. I’d only want 20 miles or so.

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