ICCARUS is a new service created by social music and video recommendations startup Scouta. It creates a three dimensional visualization of the data behind a social networking or related website. ICCARUS also shows the social network between members, the memberships of groups, and the links between members and the content they enjoy. Navigate by clicking on points of interest, or searched using commands. Results are dynamic and are delivered in real time, providing an instant visual representation of the given network
The data is fetched via TurboGears and uses the GFX library to create the visual effects.
ICCARUS was launched Wednesday at Webjam Perth and won first place from a field of around 15 demonstrating startups. I spoke with Scouta CEO Richard Giles at the WA Web Awards Friday and he told me that the feedback on ICCARUS had been strong. Scouta plans on further refining ICCARUS with a possibility of providing the service to the public either later this year or early 2008.
The screencast above doesn’t do the service full justice, but it’s enough to give some idea of what it is capable of.
This entry was posted
on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Duncan, are you from Perth? Just curious. Seems like there’s a lot of startup activity there recently. I’m in silicon valley but I may take a side trip to perth next feb to take a look around since I’ll be in singapore.
1. it’s not business application
2. it’s not user friendly
3. it’s not family product
4. it’s scientific product for engineers, intelligence, and highly educated users.
5. What’s point navigating 3d-space links?
If you show off something so big. No one is going to buy it. . Take an example… We saw 3d internet browser on Techcrunch. No one use it… i stop using it. It not because bug problems, graphics, etc…
Another example, Microsoft Vista — 3D flip thing… No one liked it.
Product Failure
I think you’re missing the potential of something like this is being able to tackle networks, both from an understanding perspective or even a troubleshooting one. This is nothing like that 3D browser or Aero and it will never be a consumer level product. As Ivan notes in Comment 1 visualization is the next step forward in data representation.
this maybe a good application for enterprise users but the video positions it as a consumer app. and for a consumer app this is one hell of a confusing video. the irony is that the voice over kept saying “its an easy way…” , “you can see it easily…” and i kept thinking what the hell is he talking about… i can’t understand anything…
The guy kept on typing commands to show different things and it’s really really confusing. At the end, it’s just tool showing relationships among different entities. A 2D-graph is much easier to understand for most people.
3D is a new way to visualise data? Sorry but I remember a slew of 3D apps. from the past decade that have gone nowhere. They were all data apps. and many were also about networked data.
ICCARUS may find a good place in a niche market. But for the rest of us?
3D is a novel approach to data (?) but the problem with it Duncan is that it gets really freaking complicated in no time at all. Data along two dimensions is relatively straight forward (x, y) but for some reason, adding a third, forth or fifth dimension along with different scales… it’s just too much for our still simple brains to comprehend in a “snapshot”.
Simplicity, but comprehensive is the key for success. Look how easy, albeit so ugly, myspace made it to attract millions. This won’t have broad based appeal due to being so complicated. More is not always better.
I work with recommender systems and while this is quite an interesting representation, it also seems very useless. All this is is 3d confirmation of what we already knew for certain thanks to mathematical proofs. If it let you see some emergent phenomena in the data that wasn’t clear through other methods, then it might be useful. But that case wasn’t really made here.
Jon
I agree fully, it is complicated. ICCARUS is very, very new and isn’t ready yet for broader use (ask Richard: he’ll tell you as well), but it is a step in the right direction. An obvious inclusion (for me at least) would be tags as well, perhaps a clearer inclusion of reference points so you know what you’re looking at etc… the flip side though is that done right this could potentially be a much easier way of identifying network issues and relationships. Maybe not quite the trucks of Tom Clancy’s Netforce (c. 2000 for memory was the first book) but a better way than going through line upon line of code and logs.
This is nothing like Aero — but to clear the point, no one I’ve talked to hates Aero. They hate VISTA because the only good thing about it is Aero and it’s too much slower and buggier for that to be worth it.
I convert people to Linux all the time by showing them beryl
It seems that we see the big concurency on the visualization tool startups.
First of all, there was a publish on Mashable with list of such tools.
Last week, I found an article on WebWare about http://walk2web.com They do some new way visualization of web,.. and now - ICCARUS.
Hmm, it’s getting interesting
Question is, who knows how to harness such a potential technology?
I know a company or two who has been doing some great job to push this out to the public. Would be nice to see how far they can take it. My take is, they’ll fail because the public isn’t prepared for such a thing, yet.
It would work well for an engineer troubleshooting or designing a big network.
Might be cool in a movie –like iHero….
Other than that — might make a good screensaver for your iphone.
Printing out results of 3D rendering is difficult too — bummer.
Uh, I gotta ask, anyone noticed this looks like it is based off the idea/model/software Jon Longoria and Gerard Toonstra of the HNC Network / theReformed began developing back in 1999 with a visualization of relationships in the Cloud?
Before they start distributing this, I think it might be wise to check and see if someone hasn’t already developed on the concept before lawsuits start flying.
It looks similar to what http://www.quintura.com does for web searching. Visualization is the next step in representating any data.
Duncan, are you from Perth? Just curious. Seems like there’s a lot of startup activity there recently. I’m in silicon valley but I may take a side trip to perth next feb to take a look around since I’ll be in singapore.
No one is going to use it. Here’s why…
1. it’s not business application
2. it’s not user friendly
3. it’s not family product
4. it’s scientific product for engineers, intelligence, and highly educated users.
5. What’s point navigating 3d-space links?
If you show off something so big. No one is going to buy it. . Take an example… We saw 3d internet browser on Techcrunch. No one use it… i stop using it. It not because bug problems, graphics, etc…
Another example, Microsoft Vista — 3D flip thing… No one liked it.
Have you ever watch Tom Hanks’ Big movie?
Remember he complaint about the building transform into robot. He said “I don’t get it.”
Product Failure
I think you’re missing the potential of something like this is being able to tackle networks, both from an understanding perspective or even a troubleshooting one. This is nothing like that 3D browser or Aero and it will never be a consumer level product. As Ivan notes in Comment 1 visualization is the next step forward in data representation.
Great to see WA up there - well done!
I saw this demo’d at WebJam. There is something about 3D that wows audiences.
this maybe a good application for enterprise users but the video positions it as a consumer app. and for a consumer app this is one hell of a confusing video. the irony is that the voice over kept saying “its an easy way…” , “you can see it easily…” and i kept thinking what the hell is he talking about… i can’t understand anything…
Putting data into 3D mode is a new way of representation and i believe that there is immense business potential in the application.
Worthwhile to keep a close tab on the developments from Scouta in the coming months.
The guy kept on typing commands to show different things and it’s really really confusing. At the end, it’s just tool showing relationships among different entities. A 2D-graph is much easier to understand for most people.
3D is a new way to visualise data? Sorry but I remember a slew of 3D apps. from the past decade that have gone nowhere. They were all data apps. and many were also about networked data.
ICCARUS may find a good place in a niche market. But for the rest of us?
3D is a novel approach to data (?) but the problem with it Duncan is that it gets really freaking complicated in no time at all. Data along two dimensions is relatively straight forward (x, y) but for some reason, adding a third, forth or fifth dimension along with different scales… it’s just too much for our still simple brains to comprehend in a “snapshot”.
Jon
Simplicity, but comprehensive is the key for success. Look how easy, albeit so ugly, myspace made it to attract millions. This won’t have broad based appeal due to being so complicated. More is not always better.
I work with recommender systems and while this is quite an interesting representation, it also seems very useless. All this is is 3d confirmation of what we already knew for certain thanks to mathematical proofs. If it let you see some emergent phenomena in the data that wasn’t clear through other methods, then it might be useful. But that case wasn’t really made here.
Cool toy though.
Jon
I agree fully, it is complicated. ICCARUS is very, very new and isn’t ready yet for broader use (ask Richard: he’ll tell you as well), but it is a step in the right direction. An obvious inclusion (for me at least) would be tags as well, perhaps a clearer inclusion of reference points so you know what you’re looking at etc… the flip side though is that done right this could potentially be a much easier way of identifying network issues and relationships. Maybe not quite the trucks of Tom Clancy’s Netforce (c. 2000 for memory was the first book) but a better way than going through line upon line of code and logs.
This is nothing like Aero — but to clear the point, no one I’ve talked to hates Aero. They hate VISTA because the only good thing about it is Aero and it’s too much slower and buggier for that to be worth it.
I convert people to Linux all the time by showing them beryl
It seems that we see the big concurency on the visualization tool startups.
First of all, there was a publish on Mashable with list of such tools.
Last week, I found an article on WebWare about http://walk2web.com They do some new way visualization of web,.. and now - ICCARUS.
Hmm, it’s getting interesting
It has great potentials…
Question is, who knows how to harness such a potential technology?
I know a company or two who has been doing some great job to push this out to the public. Would be nice to see how far they can take it. My take is, they’ll fail because the public isn’t prepared for such a thing, yet.
It would work well for an engineer troubleshooting or designing a big network.
Might be cool in a movie –like iHero….
Other than that — might make a good screensaver for your iphone.
Printing out results of 3D rendering is difficult too — bummer.
Not bad at all, pretty good actually. I can see how it would be of use to a social network…
Uh, I gotta ask, anyone noticed this looks like it is based off the idea/model/software Jon Longoria and Gerard Toonstra of the HNC Network / theReformed began developing back in 1999 with a visualization of relationships in the Cloud?
Before they start distributing this, I think it might be wise to check and see if someone hasn’t already developed on the concept before lawsuits start flying.
Visuals are very cool, looks kinda hard to use, not as easy as http://www.socialsuggester.com
Oooh…ahhh…
but how “actionable” is this data?
What does this viz tell u?