Internet Health
Web Reviews
13 April 2003

Internet Health 2003;1:2

URL: http://www.maps.map.net/  

Reviewed by : Vinod Scaria
VirtualMed

Correspondence: vinodscaria@yahoo.co.in 

Map. Net is a free demonstration of Antarti.ca's VisualNet^TM  Technology The website organises the websites derived from the Open Directory Project's[ http://www.dmoz.org/ ]Database and superimposes it onto the map of Antarctica [see figure1].

Map.Net Screenshot Click on Image to Enlarge

The regions are divided based on the prevalence of the number of websites in each specific category. Thus the visitor can get a glimpse of what is the actual number of websites in each category. The website can be used to navigate around 2.5million websites.

There is also a 2 Minute Flash Drill which teaches you how to browse effectively through the maze of websites.

Health on the Map

As expected, the Health category occupies only a minor proportion of the whole landscape. The Health category is subdivided into 31 subcategories ranging from Ageing to women's Health, and boasts of 49094 websites. [see figure2]

The Health Category of Map. Net Click on Image to Enlarge.

The website marks each category by a target sign which is graphically described on the basis of the thickness of each segment.The outer black circle thickness demonstrates the number of outgoing links, while that of the inner white circle describes the number of incoming links. The central red spot describes the number of pages in the website.

Glancing through the health category, one can clearly visualise prominent websites like the that of the Health on the Net foundation [ http://www.hon.ch/  ], alcoholics-anonymous[ http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/  ]etc.

Medical Citation Map

In addition, the website also hosts other demos on health related fields.The demo based on PubMed: the Medical Citation Map, based on the NLM's bibliographic database Pubmed is also very interesting and informative.

Screenshot from the PubMed Interface.http://pubmed.antarcti.ca/

Useful Literature Geographical Informatics

Kamel Boulos MN, Roudsari AV, Carson ER: A simple method for serving Web hypermaps with dynamic database drill-down. [http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/pdf/1476-072X-1-1.pdf]
Int J Health Geogr 2002, 1:1 [PubMed Abstract][Publisher Full Text][PubMed Central Full Text]

Girardin L: Mapping the virtual geography of the World-Wide Web. [http://www.girardin.org/luc//cgv/www5/index.html]
In Proceedings of the 5th International World Wide Web Conference: Paris, France 1996 May

Tutarel O: Geographical distribution of publications in the field of medical education. [http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/2/3/]
BMC Med Educ 2002, 2(1):3 [PubMed Abstract][Publisher Full Text][PubMed Central Full Text]

Kamel Boulos MN, Roudsari AV, Carson ER: Health Geomatics: An Enabling Suite of Technologies in Health and Healthcare (Methodolical Review).
J Biomed Inform 2001, 34(3):195-219 [PubMed Abstract]

Maged N Kamel Boulos:The use of interactive graphical maps for browsing medical/health Internet information resources http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/2/1/1

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