the Topic/Tag Cloud
The Topic/Tag Cloud is really just a visual "map" of volumes & types of information. It provides an insight as to how much and what types of information lie before you.
The challenge is to make that information easily accessible and browse-able.
The TagCloud displayed on this site is pretty standard.
It maps the projects that The Communication Studio has worked on during the past decade or so by topic area.
Click on a keyword to view the relevant examples : a little "InfoCloud" window pops up.
You can also invoke the InfoCloud popup from anywhere in this site. The clickable icon is always available in the menubar.
The InfoCloud popup is a conventient way to navigate a large library of content by topic without the endless "back & forth" pogo-clicking to and from a listpage of search results. It appears in a separate browser window that is operating as a popup.
Once InfoCloud is invoked (see below) you can scroll through a comprehensive list of items, grouped by keword topic categories. Click on an item of interest in the InfoCloud and the appropriate example from the TCS Experience Portfolio appears in the MainWindow of the site.
Perhaps the InfoCloud "popup" should be physically embedded in the Browser window, so that we wouldn't have to juggle multiple windows on-screen. This requires more sophisticated Javascript - and is a work in progress.
In the meantime, you need only to click on the "InfoCloud" icon that appears on every page in order to bring the popup to the foreground.
Try it!
The tag cloud is essentially a preview of the world of search-by-topic-area options, with fastTrack links to the results. In this case, the keywords have been pre-selected, based on assumptions about the technology buzzwords in good currency and the market areas that recruiters and hiring managers might want to see.