can be represented as a star
on the yahoo zodiac
and each possible
sequence of words
chosen to accompany
a link to that page
(ie, the linktext)
can also be represented
as stars
now a visitor to that page
after having evaluated it
could theoretically color 'green'
those examples of possible linktext
that describe what she liked
about the page
red what she didn't like
and yellow if her feelings were mixed
and she could then
theoretically
rank those possibilities
by importance to her
at that moment
so when a web author
wishes to choose linktext
to link a given page
in theory
she should scan those hypothetical rankings
from all her intended audience
top down
to find the highest rated linktext
that's short enough for the context
of her linking page
now if we could analyse
all
the possible linktext rankings
for all possible links
we should notice clusters
that describe variations
in some particular qualities
'long' or 'short' for document length
'lively' or 'dull' for writing quality
'credible' or 'doubtful' for research quality
etc
and these meta-clusters
might be loosely ranked
for how important they generally are
(perhaps with asterisks
specifying conditions
when they'll become specially
important, or not)
the goal of
what i've been calling
heraldic barcodes
is to graphically map
the most important meta-clusters
onto an icon
so, eg document-length
might be a bar along one edge
that's mostly black for short docs
mostly white for long ones
while writing quality might supply
the color-saturation
of the icon's background
grey for dull, bright for lively
etc
with these mappings
chosen by design
to be intuitive-to-remember
and to 'foreground'
the most important values
which alas
are not eternal and unchanging
but rather ever-evolving
in response to changing human needs
and expectations
even allowing
custom mappings
for the custom needs
of a particular group of customers
for the same principles apply
not just to webpage linktext
but to any content-set
eg flickrpix
news stories
news pix
audio files
video files
all of which have
within many different contexts
identifiable value meta-clusters
that cry out for well-designed
heraldic barcodes
