v0.0.3 Steem.Cloud gets another upgrade w/ User and Topic Clouds [release notes]

sandwich (60)in #steemit • 8 years ago (edited)

Check out the introductory post for Steem.Cloud if you have not already.

Ever been curious about your language patterns? Curious about language trends in a particular corner of steem? Wonder no more with topic and user clouds.

Dan's Cloud
Dan's word cloud on Steem.Cloud

How to Use

Good news! It's consistent with steemit paths.

http://steem.cloud/@username
http://steem.cloud/trending/topic - trending can be replaced with created/popular/etc
While on the site, you can click the hamburger located in the top left corner of the screen, and enter your username or topic from there.

Where's the updates to Realtime you promised?

Didn't happen on this release. Became focused on features that users would find more joy in, it appears the only person on the planet who derives joy from the realtime cloud is myself. That's good and all, but it won't really help with the growth or awareness of this project.

What's coming in v0.0.4

GUI Improvements
- Color schemes
- Cloud Customization/Claiming
- Masking
- Saving Word Clouds as Hi-res images
UI improvements focused around navigation
- Changing between trending/created/popular/etc for topics
- Jump to Steemit or Steemd for User and Topic clouds.
New homepage

So really, what's the point?

I get asked this quite a bit. It appears people are confused why I would focus on something that isn't directly correlated to payouts or earnings or exploiting Steem for easy and quick money. Sure, other apps that may have taken an afternoon to write easily recieve $1k in author rewards.

My reasoning is quite simple. IMHO

The value to Steem is the content, not the ability to make money. Believing otherwise is myopic

Here's what motivates me

I am passionate about patterns, big-data and language. I've always had a fetish for word clouds.
Before this, I've never done any blockchain development. While this is a modest attempt, I've learned quite a bit about the Steem API, as well as scaling and memory leaks in an unfamiliar environment. It's not as simple as you think to sanitize and analyze text from blocks that could contain tens of thousands of words without missing a beat or a block.
There is a grander purpose and goal to the analyzation engine that now underlies Steem.Cloud, and this goal is nearing the point of being possible. But the specifics on this grand quest must wait for another day.