Visualize Hoovers Data With Anacubis

Anacubis.com, an information visualization company, has opened up a new demo which includes visualization of data provided by business site Hoovers. So fire up IE (this site won't work in Opera) and give it a whirl at http://www.anacubis.com/Partners/Services/hoovers.asp . (You'll also need to have Java enabled.)

If you've ever used Anacubis before, this'll look familiar. The search options are on the left while the results space is on the right. You can search the data by company, ticker, executive, or industry keyword. I searched for YHOO, and got one result (Yahoo, of course) which I could then add to the view. I did, and got a lovely chrysanthemum of data. When I zoomed in on it a little (the tools for viewing and manipulating results space are on the top left of the results space) I saw that parts of this data flower had different icons. There were icons for people, for companies (a little flag indicates the nationality of the company), for industry sectors, and so on. When I clicked on the Yahoo icon I got, on the left side of the page, contact information about the company and information about their revenues. (Right-clicking and choosing "Show All Properties" provides even more information.) When I clicked on the Terry Semel icon I got no additional information, even when I right-clicked. What you get will vary a lot.

You can get change what kind of information is displayed by using the tools on the far right of the data area. You can specify what kind of data appears as well as how the data is organized. If you're looking to research companies within an industry sector, or you just want to get an idea of where a company sits in a particular industry sphere, this is an interesting tool with which to experiment.

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