Visualising Communities and Characters
Looks like Anjo has gotten off to a flyer in 2005 - he's done some really interesting work on visualising (weblog) communities and isolating the unique characteristics held by individuals in those communities.
It's worth reading the posts for details on how he's gone about it (and some of his caveats) - but it's a neat possible way of navigating communities.
In theory, I suppose the process might go something like this:
1) I want to find out about a topic so
2) I want to find out who's talking about it
3) I find someone who is, I like what they say, but who could I cross-check it against? So I search for those in the community. (Enter Anjo's tool #1)
4) The community seems to be vibrant, so I want a quick who's who. (Anjo's tool #2)
Of course, I was slightly concerned that on his character analysis/who's who for the community being analysed, my unique characteristics were:
ancient, british, cup, fame, flag, rhetoric, scientist, tea, treat.
Ha ha ha ... oh. ;)