URL: http://www.maps.map.net
By Vinod Scaria
Calicut Medical College
Correspondence: vinodscaria@yahoo.co.in
Map. Net is a free
demonstration of Antarti.ca's VisualNetTM Technology
The website organises the websites derived from the Open
Directory Project's[ http://www.dmoz.org
]Database and superimposes it onto the map of Antarctica
[see figure1].
 |
Map.Net
Screenshot
Click on Image to Enlarge |
The regions are divided
based on the prevalence of the number of websites in
each specific category. Thus
the visitor can get a glimpse of what is the actual
number of websites in each category. The website can be
used to navigate around 2.5million websites.
There is also a 2 Minute
Flash Drill which teaches you how to browse effectively
through the maze of websites.
Health on the Map
As expected, the Health
category occupies only a minor proportion of the whole
landscape. The Health category is subdivided into 31
subcategories ranging from Ageing to women's Health, and
boasts of 49094 websites. [see figure2]
 |
The
Health Category of Map. Net
Click on Image to
Enlarge.
|
 The
website marks each category by a target sign which is
graphically described on the basis of the thickness of
each segment.The outer black circle thickness
demonstrates the number of outgoing links, while that of
the inner white circle describes the number of incoming
links. The central red spot describes the number of
pages in the website.
Glancing through the
health category, one can clearly visualise prominent
websites like the that of the Health on the Net
foundation [ http://www.hon.ch
], alcoholics-anonymous[ http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org
]etc.
Medical Citation Map
 In
addition, the website also hosts other demos on health
related fields.The demo based on PubMed: the Medical
Citation Map, based on the NLM's bibliographic database
Pubmed is also very interesting and informative.
Useful
Literature Geographical Informatics
Kamel
Boulos MN, Roudsari AV, Carson ER: A simple method
for serving Web hypermaps with dynamic database
drill-down. [http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/pdf/1476-072X-1-1.pdf]
Int J Health Geogr 2002, 1:1 [PubMed
Abstract][Publisher
Full Text][PubMed
Central Full Text] 
Girardin
L: Mapping the virtual geography of the World-Wide
Web. [http://www.girardin.org/luc//cgv/www5/index.html]
In Proceedings of the 5th International World Wide
Web Conference: Paris, France 1996
May
Tutarel
O: Geographical distribution of publications in the
field of medical education. [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/2/3/]
BMC Med Educ 2002, 2(1):3 [PubMed
Abstract][Publisher
Full Text][PubMed
Central Full Text]
Kamel
Boulos MN, Roudsari AV, Carson ER: Health Geomatics:
An Enabling Suite of Technologies in Health and
Healthcare (Methodolical Review).
J Biomed Inform 2001, 34(3):195-219
[PubMed
Abstract]
Maged N Kamel Boulos:The
use of interactive graphical maps for browsing
medical/health Internet information resources
http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/2/1/1
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