I am moving my blog to http://www.rahulnair.net/blog. I have moved a few selected posts over and will be posting there in future

TagMaps is the latest research project to come out of my group at YRB. It visualization technique that displays text on geographic maps. TagMaps can be used to communicate characteristics of location-based data in an easy-to-understand way.

The World Explorer uses TagMaps to display Flickr tags that denote the 'important' tags in any given geographical area. You can play with it at http://tagmaps.research.yahoo.com/worldexplorer.php

For more info check out the post on the YRB blog.

I think the new iPhone is an amazing device. I like the sensors, high resolution screen, music, wifi , bluetooth and visual voicemail. I think 8GB is the sweetspot for a high end smartphone. I wish it was true 3G and the the camera was better but those are not too much for me. I even trust Apple to get the touchscreen right even if I am yet to see any good touchscreen phones.

The real deal breaker as far as I am concerned is the forced Cingular contract - while I think $599 is a decent price for quality hardware I am completely unwilling to endure 2 years of Cingular slavery just for some hardware. I have been a Cingular customer for the past 18 months and am actually quite happy with their service - I am just philosophically opposed to being locked into a contract.