./emilychang eHub

• blog
• stream
• eHub
• photos
• videos
• about
• news
• subscribe
• ./ ideacodes

eHub Entry | see all

Written by J.T. Dabbagian and posted in eHub Reviews

Web 2.0 provides us with all sorts of ways to check our favorite sites. However, for the most part, we’ve been constrained primarily to using browsers, email and RSS Feeds. With the dawn of this second internet, there seem to be a plethora of new ways to surf the internet. Walk2Web takes old paths and give them an upgrade.

What is Walk2Web?

Walk2Web is an application that allows you to surf the web based directly on the links within the site. You begin by entering the name of the site you wish to browse, and then it comes up in the browser, complete with a female computer voice giving out the name of the site. The voice seems to work okay with site names: It got Emilychang.com, but didn’t even bother to pronounce my site name (which is JTDabbagian.com) and just simply spelled it. Honestly, considering how people have messed up my last name so many times in my life, I was glad that it didn’t bother.

From the initial viewing of your site, you see a tree-map or central node which represents the website you’re currently visiting, and all of the links to other nodes/websites that the specified site links to. You can then click on each of the links and go to different websites, which will then produce an ever-expanding tree-map with new nodes and new links you can click on. Of course, like any browser, you can also go backwards and forwards too.

What makes this good?

One of the reasons I like this site is that it allows you to visualize the way a website links to the various corners of the internet. If you’re viewing your own site, you can use Walk2Web to figure out if sites you talked about in the past have updated to have better content. It also allows you to rediscover websites that you talked about long ago, but have simply forgotten about. Maybe you’re looking for that old website that had the list of plugins for your blog, but you don’t know where it is? Odds are, if you blogged about it, it’s there somewhere, and Walk2Web can help you find it.

Problems walking the path of 2.0

As with every good path, there’s always a rather rocky mountain to trek up. For instance, Walk2Web is not designed with the typical monitor in mind. Most of the site gets squished in my browser, and it’s clear that at least a 20-inch monitor is required to surf using Walk2Web, otherwise you’ll have quite a time trying to get through the links of certain major sites. Just try going through eHub, and you’ll see what I mean.

Walk2Web offers a great way to figure out how we are all linked to each other. Any fan of the theory of Six Degrees of Separation will love seeing how certain sites link to each other. Otherwise, it’s good for examining how many sites you’ve linked to on your own blog, or comparing your blog to the links from your competitors.

Walk2Web is a good startup, and maybe with a few additional features, such as link analysis and statistics on how many sites link to a particular site, it could be a great way to measure how your favorite sites stand in the blogosphere. For now, it’s a way to discover new sites that have some hyperlinked connection with one another.

read more

Next entry: Folkstr

Previous entry: Stickis

eHub categories

3D - Activism - Advertising - Art and animation - Attention - Audio and music - Biofeedback - Blogging - Bookmarking - Browsers and surfing - Business - Classifieds - Collaborating and managing - Content Management System - Cooperative distribution and P2P - Designing - Development and/or open source - Digital media storage, transfer, conversion - Digital rights - Directories - Documents - eCommerce and Shopping - Education - eHub Features - eHub Interviews - eHub Reviews - eHub Sponsors - eHub updates and reports - eLearning - Emailing - Employment - Environment and Outdoors - Events and calendering - Family - Film - Financial - Food and drink - Forms - Games - Geotracking and mapping - Hosting and platforms - Hyperdocument - Identity - IM, messaging, chat - Internet phone - Internet TV - Invention - iPhone - Italian - Kids - Knowledge - Launcher - Legal - Lending and trading - Life stream - Local - Macintosh - Manufacturing - Mashups - Medical - Mobile - News - Nonprofits - Organizing and cataloging - Parents - Philanthropy - Photography - Podcasting - Politics - Postal mail - Previewing - Print publishing - Prototyping - Publishing - Remix - Reviews, Ratings, Ranking - RSS - Sciences - Search - Social networking - Social web - Spelling - Sports - Statistics, tracking, testing - Surveys, tests, market research - Tech support - Tech/Design events - Timelines - Travel - Video - Visualization - VoIP - Web contest - WebOS - Wi-Fi - Widgets - Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations

recent eHub readers

» Most recent entries

Browse eHub (2613 resources)

recent eHub entries

about eHub »»

eHub by rss»»

eHub on Twitter

eHub by email

eHub Interviews »»

Aug 07, 08

eHub Interviews Brightkite
Brightkite is a location-based social network that enables people to take their online profiles with them into the real world…

eHub features »»

Wedding Planning Made Easier by Kim Lau
Weddings can be a stressful time for the bride and groom (mostly the bride), and the entire project can seem…

The Language Of Gardening by Kim Lau
My fiance and I recently moved to Los Angeles and inherited a large garden, which includes, but is not limited…

tech events »»

blog | stream | eHub | photos | videos | about | subscribe | ./ideacodes

Emily Chang is an award-winning strategic designer and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes.com, a web consultancy in San Francisco that focuses on the design and user experience of next generation websites, social applications and networked communities. Learn more...
This site is copyleft under a Creative Commons license.