Topic maps. On crack.

I recently wrote a post on topic maps. I think they’re very sexy. Finally, in the information classification world, we have a way of representing the knowledge in people’s heads in the way that they think about it - in terms of the relationships between those bits of knowledge.

One of the problems topic maps have is that not many people know about them. There aren’t many cool and sexy Web 2.0 examples that, as an Information Architect, I can point to and say “Look at this. This is topic maps!”. Maybe now, though, I have that chance.

A colleague sent me a link to a blog on Trampoline System’s SONAR software. It looks amazing!

Here we see, in simple terms, the power of representing information in terms of its relationships, rather than its hierarchical, taxonomical view or its data/metadata view.

Plug this thing into your email systems, information stores, records management systems, and let it work its magic to bring all that interlinked information to the surface through natural language analysis. There’s no need to spend heaps of time and money developing complex business taxonomies for knowledge management. If there’s a relationship to find SONAR will bring it to the surface and link it to the other bits of information and articulate its relationship.

Have a look - it’s topic maps on crack.

M

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End notes

The title of this blog post is shamelessly stolen and mangled from the movie “Thank you for Smoking“. The protagonist, Nick Naylor, explains to the audience, “You know that guy who can pick up any girl he wants? I’m that guy. On crack.”