Sequoia View and other Cushion Tree Maps

Your hard drive space goes on decreasing and you're really wondering where all those bytes are disappearing. One way of searching for a big file would be to do a "Find" and give the size as greater than 5MB (for example) to search for big files. I prefer a different way of searching in terms of size, by something known as a 'Cushion Tree Map'.



Sequoia View is an example of 'Cushion Tree Map'. It's a different way of visualising data and information. For example, Sequoia View give a snapshot of any directory on your hard drive and lets you know how much space is taken by which files. You can add filters and colours to indicate only some kind of files. For example, you might only want to know the sizes of the documents, .doc files, on your drive, or the MP3s.

All the files get viewed as nestled rectangles. Clicking anywhere gets you down to the next level on the path. So, if you have a view of "c:\" first, when you click on a file, and it resides under "c:\windows\system\" then the click will take you to "c:\windows", and so on.

Sequoia View is, of course, free. But more importantly, it's a completely new way of looking at the same things, which was what attracted me to it in the first place.


Today, I came across a number of other cushion tree maps on the web. All of them give a very good visual representation of the world around us.

One of them is to see the current state of the markets. At the highest level it is by industry, and then you can zero down further.

Another one is of news around the world

And finally, this one is the best, it gives the map of the Current Google News. Clicking on a rectangle takes to to the corresponding article.