I was interviewed via instant messenger by Jeremy Wagstaff last Thursday. We spent a good hour talking about Buzztracker, information visualization and the changing face of news. Today, his column came out with a very positive writeup on buzztracker. Says Jeremy:

Launched last month, Buzztracker appears as a map of the world, dotted with red circles of varying size. ...

It's an elegant, simple view of what's going on in the world. But it's more than that: The links underline the way that events in one place are connected to those in other places — one great example is the recent spat between China and Japan about how each country was represented in respective textbooks, superficially resolved by a summit in Indonesia. On Buzztracker you see a triangle of thick red dots linked by thick gray lines. Such webs, Mr. Mod says, are "supposed to get people thinking about why these connections exist."

Jeremy then goes on to talk about Newsmap, the extremely talented Marcos Weskamp's news visualization tool.

The article isn't online (and even if it is, the WSJ charges for its online news), but if possible I highly recommend getting your hands on it (Asian Wall Street Journal, May 13th, 2005, Personal Journal section P5) — it poses a lot of good questions regarding news online.

You can read a partial transcript of both our interviews with Jeremy on Jeremy's blog, Loosewire.