Visual Thesaurus

By Dale Farris, Vice-President Golden Triangle PC Club May 2004 General Overview Visual Thesaurus is a 3D interactive reference tool, powered by THINKMAP, that gets students of all ages excited about words. Using the company's unique visualization technology, Visual Thesaurus takes a unique, and remarkably beautiful, approach to presenting the results of a word lookup. Discover and learn from nearly 140,000 words, meanings, and relationships. Through its emphasis on exploration and vocabulary building, the Visual Thesaurus can improve reading, writing and communication skills. Besides that, working with this sophisticated program is just way cool! When you first start the program and look up a word, you are provided with results unlike any other related program, and certainly unlike any other existing hard copy thesaurus. Also, once you start working with this fascinating program, be prepared to set aside a lot of time, because it will be very hard to break away from this unusual, creative approach to learning more about your words of interest. The THINKMAP, Inc. company should be commended by all in the information technology industry for conceiving and carrying out this extraordinary, visual approach to a thesaurus. Visual Thesaurus creates an animated display of words and meanings — a visual representation of the English language. The THINKMAP visualization places your word in the center of the display, connected to related words and meanings. You can then click on these words or meanings to explore further. Visual Thesaurus moves beyond strictly synonyms to display and animate connections among word definitions, multiple word meanings, and even antonyms. A user can broaden and narrow search interactively by selecting parts of speech or type of relationship among the words displayed. Color, shape, and rollover displays enhance both the usefulness and beauty of its visual representation of the English language. Visual Thesaurus provides guidance and inspiration for anyone interested in words and conversation — writers, professionals, and students. Through its emphasis on exploration and vocabulary building, Visual Thesaurus improves reading, writing and communication skills. Representing the English Language Visual Thesaurus is a visual representation of the English Language. To understand Visual Thesaurus, it is important to think more concretely about how we use language, and especially the relationship between words and meanings. Many words have multiple meanings (sometimes also called senses). The word train, for example, has sixteen meanings. It can mean "prepare for a future task or career," or can also mean "a line of railway cars coupled together." Visual Thesaurus displays these meanings as individual circles connected to the word train. The circles represent the meanings What is interesting is that the word train is not in and of itself a noun or a verb. It is the individual meanings of train that belong to a particular part of speech. For example, the concept of a "line of railway cars coupled together" is a noun, while "to prepare for a future task or career" is a verb. For this reason, the circles in Visual Thesaurus representing meanings are color coded to indicate their different parts of speech. Just as a word can have many meanings, a meaning or sense, can be expressed using multiple words. For instance, "to prepare for a future task or career" can be expressed by not only the word train, but also prepare, educate, and develop. The words associated with the same meaning are all synonyms, and therefore belong to the same synset. In Visual Thesaurus, words that belong to a synset are connected to their shared meaning by solid lines. Meanings can be expressed by multiple words. To see the words that make up a synset, mouse roll over a meaning, and the words that constitute the synset will highlight. In addition to highlighting, the definition of the meaning will appear, with example phrases when available. You just mouse roll over a meaning to view its definition. Visual Thesaurus can show more than just synonyms. It also reveals the relationships between meanings. By clicking on the meaning "a line of railway cars coupled together," the meaning moves to the center of the Visual Thesaurus and related meanings appear. Connections between meanings are displayed as dashed lines. You can mouse roll over these lines to view the nature of relationship between two meanings. For instance, when you mouse roll over the line connecting "a fast train that only stops at a few stations" to "a line of railway cars," you see that an express train is a type of train. Similarly, by rolling over the line connecting "a line of railway cars" to the meaning "transporting passengers or mail or freight," you can see that a train is a type of public transport. Express train is a narrower, or more specific term than train, which is in turn narrower than public transport. Mouse roll over dashed lines between meanings to view the type of relationship connecting them. The Narrower Terms Compass, which appears in the lower right corner of the display whenever broader or narrower terms are displayed, always points in the direction of narrower terms. Operational Features The Desktop Edition of Visual Thesaurus brings the program to your computer. Available as either a download or a hybrid CD-ROM that can be used with both Macintosh and Windows, the Desktop Edition of Visual Thesaurus is easy to install, and can be used even if you are not connected to the Internet. The Desktop Edition is a perfect gift, bringing Visual Thesaurus's unique display of words to your friends and family. Typical Uses of the Program Visual Thesaurus is an ideal software package for building skills in vocabulary, reading, and writing. Students find it playful and are quickly engaged, learning through their exploration of the English language. Anyone interested in the English language will be fascinated by this powerful, cleverly designed program that is amazing. All writers, researchers, editors, and anyone intrigued by constructing meaningful writing will want to give serious consideration to this important program. Visual Thesaurus is also a sure bet for all libraries, especially larger libraries that may be supporting a greater customer group of writers. Install and Setup Installation of the program should work smoothly and present no problems. Recommendations Visual Thesaurus is one of the most exciting, dynamic programs you will likely ever work with. At the very reasonable price, all educators, students, writers, and researchers will want to get their own copy of this amazing program. Or, if you prefer, you can also consider starting an annual subscription to the online version of the program. You will work with the program online as you work with the program installed on a desktop. Price $  29.95 (plus shipping / handling) CD ROM edition $  11.95 Individual Annual Online Subscription $    2.95 Individual Monthly Online Subscription $250.00 Institutional Annual Subscription System Configuration Requirements Windows Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP 128MB RAM 100 MB free hard disk space Mac Machines OS X 128MB RAM 100MB free hard disk space About THINKMAP, Inc. THINKMAP is a highly configurable platform for building enterprise applications that help organizations make sense of their information assets. The THINKMAP professional services team consists of experienced technologists and information designers that can offer a variety of consulting, training, and development services. The THINKMAP team of technologists and information designers can help you determine the best way to customize THIMKMAP and integrate the technology into your enterprise environment. The company can help you reduce the time to production for your THINKMAP application, and offer advise in structuring your data to take full advantage of THINKMAP's dynamic visualization capabilities. Their technologists and information designers are available to work closely with you to design, build, and deploy your THINKMAP application. They can assist you at any stage in the development cycle — from rapid prototyping to deployment. Their team offers in-person training covering THINKMAP development and deployment. Training sessions can be held at customer sites, or in their offices in downtown Manhattan. Contact Michael Freedman, CEO THINKMAP, Inc. 157 Chambers Street New York, New York 10007 212-285-8600 FAX 212-285-8999 mfreedman@THINKMAP.com www.thinkmap.com www.visualthesaurus.com