The name of the Visual Thesaurus caught my attention when browsing a list of del.icio.us bookmarks. My first impression on the appearance of this dictionary was it looked exactly like a social software. Colorful nodes, solid/dashed lines, and expanding/shrinking animation. In some sense, it is a social software for words–it not only explains the word per se but also brings up other related words. Different node and line styles are used to indicate the distinct relationships. Fourteen relationships, including antonym, pertains to (pertainym), Participle of,Derived from, etc, can be displayed in VT.

Sounds cool, huh? Give it a shot. Be careful, the results might be dizzling — I was totally overwhelmed by the results after a few exploratory clicks. Surprised by the imagination and innovation of the system, I got lost in the mass information presented as well. As for me, VT is a better tool for brainstorming instead of getting someone buried by so much relevant/irrelevant information.

In this era, too much information is as perilous as no information at all.