Do you ever stare at a sheet of data, reading the numbers across the page, and you just don’t understand what the numbers are implying? Or even at just a bunch of ideas and concepts you cannot connect the dots for? Pivot can help you make sense of all those information and data that is readily available to us everyday with us not knowing what they really mean.
First of all, what is Pivot? Sure, it is a metaphorical turning point for the age of information, but I am referring to the browser-like software developed by Microsoft Live Labs. It is probably not known to many as an internet user because it was only publicized very recently.
Being a browser, I have to be honest, Pivot is not the best; it has relatively higher memory usage and it’s not as smooth and fluent as Firefox. Although, if your computer is powerful enough, you will notice no difference whatsoever until you look at the numbers in your Task Manager.
However, I think as a software, Pivot is quite cool. Essentially, it organizes information while you are surfing, and it notes the website you would likely to visit on your next launch, making it easier for you to access that site. Pus, it’s graphical user interface is clean, simple and stylistic. You will never be concerned with the huge amount of apps you installed on your other browsers, and leading the simple design, it has no menu bars.
Okay, now getting to the most important feature here – its ability to process and organize data and information. The Microsoft Live Labs created what they call, Collections, that demonstrates to you how Pivot can categories data and display them in a manner that makes sense of the data. Let’s take the NHL teams collection for instance, the program can organize the teams according to their winning percentage, number of goals, major penalties, etc. Just from looking at this well-organized data, you can decide for yourself, which team you think is playing better on the ice overall. Of course, Pivot collections can be used for more than just sports teams, you just have to try it and decide for yourself how you want to use them.
I hope you learned something about new software in the town, tell us about your experience with it and what you think are its pros and cons.
For more information, watch a video of TED2010 talk online.