Content Curation World

Silk is a web tool to publish online spreadsheet-based data on a specific topic.

The service, which just released a new version of its offering, allows to easily convert any existing data-set into professional-looking data displays, charts, grids, and lists that can be embedded on any site and which can be viewed in multiple ways.

The value of Silk is specifically in making it easy and immediate for anyone to elegantly display and publish data sets in one of several alternative formats which include:

• Table 
• List
• Grid 
• Mosaic
• Groups
• Bars
• Map
• Donut
• Line
• Pie
• Scatter
• Stacks 

How it works: Import a table from Excel, Google Sheets or any .csv file, select the fields you want to import and Silk does the rest offering you tools to filter, edit and select your preferred visualization approach.  

You can also create data sets and displays from scratch inside Silk, and set each Silk either as public or private.

Why it is relevant for content curators: Silk provides a unique and powerful opportunity to leverage existing data and information assets, spreadsheets and databases and to convert them into highly legible and visually impactful data displays on a very specific topic. 

My evaluation: Paired with the power of Kimonolabs or Import.io to convert any website or page content into a spreadsheet, it offers great potential in creating value by providing multiple professional formats to display, present and interact with such data.
Great tool for curating data-based information assets.
 

Free forever for public Silks of up to 3000 pages.

Try it out now: https://www.silk.co/ 

Video tutorials: https://www.silk.co/product 

Treemap is a cross-platform treemap visualization downloadable software tool which allows you to import large data collections that are too big to visualize and easily navigate through standard display formats, and to create stunningly effective data displays based on the "treemap" format.

If you are not familiar with it, the treemap data display algorithm works by dividing the data display area "so that the area of each entry is proportional to the data values" it contains.

In addition to the classic treemap layout algorithm, TreeMap also offers additional display formats including squarified variant that harmonizes aspect ratios of the rectangles, the circular tag cloud and Voronoi layouts.

"In terms of interaction, TreeMap provides a zooming interface as well as the possibility to drill-down. Details on demand are available in the form of pop-ups whose content can be freely customized."

Data can be imported from Excel, MySQL / SQL Server / PostgreSQL / Oracle databases and there color, height, labels, relevance can be mapped to any record attribute.

30-day free trial available: http://www.treemap.com/try/

Pricing: $259 for license

N.B.: The Treemap server software ($2495 for internal use - higher rates for public use), allows you to publicly share and publish online all of your treemap visualizations.

My comment: I think that treemaps will revolutionize the way we can organize and make accessible large data sets and collections in ways that are immediately useful for the layman. I wish I could already utilize a technology like this one to organize some of my large tool collections, as however good, the present-day tools just don't cut in when you need to work with medium to large-size collections.

I look forward to lower prices and more user-friendly versions of Treemap to be released and integrated in other data curation apps. There is a fast growing market of companies and individual data curators highly interested in making sense of their data sets.

More info: http://www.treemap.com/

Features: http://www.treemap.com/features/

Free 30-day try-out: http://www.treemap.com/try/

Download (Win, OSX, Linux): http://www.treemap.com/download/

Datasets (that you can play with): http://www.treemap.com/datasets/

Documentation: http://www.treemap.com/documentation/

Check also:

Treemap Server: http://www.treemap.com/server/
Server try-out: http://www.treemap.com/server/try/

Treemap API: http://www.treemap.com/api/

API try-out: http://www.treemap.com/api/try/