Dynamic Simplification by Mike Bostock.
From the post:
A combination of the map zooming and dynamic simplification demonstrations: as the map zooms in and out, the simplification area threshold is adjusted so that it is always appropriate to the current scale. Thus, the map looks good and renders quickly at all points during the animation.
While d3.js is the secret sauce here, I am posting this for the notion of “dynamic simplification.”
What if the presentation of a topic map were to use “dynamic simplification?”
Say that I have a topic map with topics for all the tweets on some major event. (Lady Gaga’s latest video (NSFW) for example.
The number of tweets for some locations would display as a mass of dots. Not terribly informative.
If on the other hand, from say a country wide perspective, the tweets were displayed as a solid form and only on zooming in did they become distinguished (looking to see if Dick Cheney tweeted about it), that would be more useful.
Or at least more useful for some use cases.
The Dynamic Simplification demo is part of a large collection of amazing visuals you will find at: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock.