Getting in late on Dave’s Google Outline Browser. I have a hell of a lot of respect for this—because it feels really familiar.
Before I left my former company, I wrote a new feature for our flagship application, a client server application that supported government procurement. The feature traced complex relationships between contracting documents—requirements, solicitations, contracts, modifications, delivery orders, etc.—by means of an outline browser. For the first time, contracting agents could explore in a simple interface the path a contract line item took from requirement through closeout, regardless of the number of contractual documents it passed through.
The relationships Google tracks, as explored by the Outline Browser, are much subtler than this, and potentially infinite (well, within the 1000 call limit imposed by the beta). Mind bomb, indeed.
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