Disqus Gravity — The web of discussions | Hacker News Reader

Disqus Gravity — The web of discussions

disqus.com

33 pointsjoshuasortino15 comments

This reminds me of Altavista search back in 1999 (it would string together words that were connected, creating a web - exciting stuff back then).

Except I can't figure out how Gravity would be useful at all. I can't, for example expand the "tech" section.

This kinda reminds me Tom Groves' "Corkboard" idea (except these are topic bubbles, and Tom actually created floating topic "Post-its")

http://web.archive.org/web/20040725085305/http://www.tomgrov...

What am I supposed to be doing with it? What am I supposed to be getting from it? Admiring some design work or absorbing useful information? The aesthetic is there, but the utility? Nonexistent. This isn't how you present this type of data to a consumer. It isn't consumption-friendly.

Some of the text in the smaller bubbles are illegible. Also, is it possible to prevent the collision of a few bubbles from causing everything on the screen to move?

Very impressive!

Am I missing something- I like that the blogs are in circles- kind of fun but does it help me find blogs I wouldn't find otherwise?

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I'm the lead designer on this project. Gravity probably won't replace Google Reader just yet. Out goal was to create a fun experience, show off a little bit of our network, and listen to feedback – feedback that we might use to drive the design and features of potential future Disqus products.

This is very different than most of the stuff I've seen using d3. Do you have plans to "disqus" how it was done?

Looks like it's using some of the Force Layout stuff https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Force-Layout

really awesome design. maybe use more images in the bubbles instead of text to get more clicks?

Looks like future versions will include an easter egg!

Shhh! ;-)

Too little information, too much cognitive overhead.

this looks cool, what's the technology behind it?

Check out D3 here, lots of cool stuff: http://d3js.org

The frontend is written in d3 and the backend is good old fashioned Django on Postgres.

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