Data Visualization with 'Maps'
Tim Bray's new company (nothing to do with me) Antarctica Systems is launching a new product called "Visual Net" for finding/discovering data through "Maps" -- not necessarily in the GIS sense, but in the data visualization sense. That is, using a visual paradigm, such as city blocks and buildings to represent different data "nodes".
Now, while most ArcIMS content producers are not worried about data visualization, I do see this as a growth area for development, especially when we can now cross-link to Rich Internet Applications, such as Zoomify. And if the term 'Maps' for data visualization becomes the colloquial term in use, ArcIMS developers are going to be asked what they know about it (read - opportunity).
Lots of people are holding data with a spatial component -- how do they find, and how can they see where that point (as example) actually is ? At the moment I am beginning to put some of our non-GIS data into Oracle spatial and then exposing it via ArcIMS -- examples are things like seal and penguin sightings, and polygons representing flora, such as lychen -- which is bread and butter ArcIMS stuff. Once these layers are exposed, then I simply need to hyperlink them via their ID to a CF page that can serve up the actual data. I suppose this is a quite literal way of data visualization (as is a parcel allotment system), and my mind wanders to things like what GeoURL is attempting to do for Blogs. I am giving a short talk in November on related issues and I would like to know if anyone developed or know of any similar/innovative data visualization approaches using ArcIMS (or other systems) ?