Microsoft Pivot, Navigating the web, as a web, by Steve Clayton

I saw Gary Flake give the first public demo of Pivot back at the PDC in November 2009 and I was wowed. This is his latest demo at TED where he really brings it to life and shows how Pivot is a new navigation metaphor for data and for the web.

His first demo of mortality data is a new one on me and does a fine job of introducing us to how Pivot can help bring meaning and new insights on a sea of data. He then turns to the web and shows us the canonical demo of Sports Illustrated covers which highlights how the visual nature of Pivot promoted serendipitous viewing of data. He takes that one stage further with a demo of the Pivot Wikipedia collection which really does bring to life the notion of navigating the web as a web…not a series of steps from one page to another or a list of 10 blue links as you would see in a search results page.

His final demo was a really new one on me that I’ll go take more of a look at – visually navigating your search history. You know those moments when you want to step back through the breadcrumbs of your last 24 hours of web surfing for that page you forgot to bookmark? Or you remember how a page looked that you want to revisit but not what the page actually was? Pivot can help.

The final thing I love about this demo? The length…not much over 5 minutes. Gary delivers, leaves people intrigued and gets off the stage.

You can download Pivot for free