ReadWriteWeb

Internet users in Turkey have found an interesting visualization to highlight their numbers, connect with one another, air their grievances and hopefully reach their goals using Google Maps and shared documents.

A reader wrote to us tonight saying that his fellow citizens have been "struggling with cencorship for several years just like their Chinese counterparts. Prominent websites are banned in Turkey, such as youtube, lasf.fm and google pages mostly because of political reasons." In protest, many of people are virtually lining the streets using a shared interface, creating what is becoming a fascinating, non-violent and hopefully effective visualization.

Could a more eye-catching approach to syndication make RSS more accesible to mainstream users outside the geekosphere? Two new websites have just launched that rely on such a strategy gaining traction.

Spectives and Readfresh are the sites in question, and both offer thumbnail images and a limited amount of text. Readfresh monitors sites and brings the most recently updated sites to the top of a user's page, allowing users to see what's new at a glance. Spectives, on the other hand, gives users "one page, a lot of pictures, updating constantly" from RSS feeds and websites. Read on for a side-by-side comparison and our assessment.

UPDATE: According to a recent iA Twitter update the interactive Web Trend Map 4 will open for beta testers tomorrow if it can solve some server problems.

We were very excited earlier this year when RWW made its way onto the latest edition of the Web Trend Map. For those of you unfamiliar with this map, it "plots the Internet's leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains and personalities are carefully selected through dialogue with map enthusiasts, and every domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, and character". Information architecture company iA built this awesome visualization and we have learned that it is about to roll out an interactive version of its map later this month.