TouchGraph Facebook Browser

Continuing the theme of interesting interfaces, check out the below screencap from TouchGraph Photos, a Java-based Facebook app which maps your friends and their relationships using coloured bubbles (and photos when your more zoomed in). It's similar to the popular Friend Wheel app (175,000 adds and counting) but with a slicker interface and a focus on navigating your friends' photos. They've employed the same interface in tools for exploring both Google and Amazon.

TUN3R: old skool radio discovery

Kooky interface of the week award goes to radio discovery site TUN3R which presents visitors with a giant radio 'dial' populated with thumbnail images of assorted online radio stations. Drag the 'needle' over a thumbnail and you hear a recent sample of the station's output. Beneath the dial you get details of the streaming format and location, a screengrab of the station's homepage and a sample of the recent playlist (if available).

Randomly clicking around the mosaic proves entertaining for a minute or two, although it's the search functionality which is more likely to generate a genuine musical match; typing in the name of an artist highlights every station on the dial which has recently played one of their tracks. Nice. You can also filter by genre or language or search the contents of the station's homepage. Most of the featured stations are promoted for free, although there also an option to buy space in a million dollar homepage stylee.

Whilst I suspect I may not be revisiting TUN3R on a regular basis, it's a interesting attempt to recreate the physicality of analogue radio's dial-twiddling experience (you even get a touch of static when you're roving around the dial) and much more compelling than a list of the stations could ever be.