Microsoft Debuts Pivot Image Discovery Platform

Posted 11/19/2009 at 1:50pm | by Bart Salisbury

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It’s not an easy thing, conceptualizing bunches of data. Efforts at visualization range from the simple (elementary statistics), to the complex (Mark Lombardi’s Global Networks, for example). The clever jakes at Microsoft Live Labs have debuted their way of visually managing lots of data with Pivot.

According the Pivot web site: “Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web.”

At its heart, Pivot is a database manager. It works on a “collection” of data that is tagged with an image. The image, reflective of its underlying data, is then manipulated using keywords and filters. Data can be stored locally or online, with the number of data points in complex arrangements limited only by available storage capacity. High resolution images within the dataset are manipulated using Seadragon, Microsoft Live Labs’ image manipulation software.

Manipulation is fairly fluid, but appears limited by the nature of the images used to represent data. While Microsoft Live Labs seeks to have data trolling to become more personal; to have people connect on an emotional level with their data, the wrong choice of representational images could well impair this desire. (The images they use in their Wikipedia example seem to bear this out--they are representational icons with little other meaning. What they collectively impart to a user, if anything, is pretty much up to the user.)

Further, Pivot relies on a pre-existing database structure and development of specific database entities for manipulation. The web may be wide open and wild, making it unmanageable, but it also doesn’t have boundaries restricting its information possibilities. Is taming it, which Pivot strives to do, or learning to cope with it the better approach?

Pivot is currently Windows 7 only. Aero must be enabled. Microsoft Live Labs also recommends a 2 Ghz 32-bit processor and 2 Gb of memory, but would really you rather have something a bit beefier. Pivot is available by invitation only. You can request an invitation code a the Pivot download site.