Blog of Q's

First off, check out the newly launched Buzztracker (www.buzztracker.org),
put together by a 24-year old American expatriate in Tokyo, Craig Mod.
Mr. Mod started working a few years back on what he thought was an art
project — dots and lines representing news stories around the world
and the links between them. All very pretty, but the closer you looked,
he recalls, “suddenly land masses began to emerge and you started
forming associations.” News and geography were linked and Buzztracker
was born.

Launched last month, Buzztracker appears as a map of
the world, dotted with red circles of varying size. The circles denote
news stories gathered from Google News emanating from that location on
the date in question, the size depending on the amount of media
coverage. Each circle is linked by a gray line to other locations
mentioned in the stories. Click on a circle and you’re taken to a list
of news stories originating from that point.

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.”