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by araes 499 days ago
Found the presentation a little overwhelming in the current format. Took a bit to realize the preset part in the upper left actually led to further dataviz vectors like AA (yes/no), rarity, and Google Books inclusion. However, offers a lot in terms of the visualization and data depth available. Also liked https://archive.anarchy.cool/blog/all-isbns.html#visualizing for the region clustering look.

The preset year part was neat though in and of itself just for looking at how active certain regions and areas have been in publishing. Poland's been really active lately. Norway looks very quiet by comparison. China looks like they ramped in ~2005 and huge amounts in the last decade.

United States has got some weird stuff too. Never heard of them, yet Blackstone Audio, Blurb Inc., and Draft2Digital put out huge numbers of ISBNs.
1 comments
phiresky 499 days ago
It is admittedly pretty noisy, which is somewhat intentional because the focus was on high data density. Here's an a bit more minimalistic view (less color, only one text level simultaneously):

https://phiresky.github.io/isbn-visualization/?dataset=all&g...

It could probably be tweaked further to not show some of the texts (the N publishers part), less stuff on hover, etc.

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araes 498 days ago
It's ok. Not an issue, since it was meeting the request of the competition, not some commenter on the web.

On the data density part, actually noticed there's most of the covers for the books too, which was kind of a cool bit. Not sure if it's feasible, yet would be neat to show them as if they were the color of their binding in their pictures.

Makes me almost want a Skyrim style version of this idea, where they're all little 3D books on their 3D shelves, and you can wander down the library isles by sections. Click a book like Skyrim and put it in your inventory or similar. Thought this mod [1] especially was one of the coolest community additions to Skyrim when it came out. Also in the "not sure if it's feasible" category.

[1] Book Covers Skyrim, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/901?tab=...

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makizar 499 days ago
That's a really nice view! Made me think of this map of IP addresses arranged as a Hilbert curve i saw in this Tom7 video: (the rest of the video is wildly good if you haven't seen it) https://youtu.be/JcJSW7Rprio?si=wzFq4p61qYmpT59x&t=360
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