Method and apparatus for customizing the display of multidimensional data

1. A computer implemented process for customizing a display of a tag cloud, the computer implemented process comprising:

displaying an interactive legend in conjunction with the display of the tag cloud, the interactive legend comprising a plurality of tag attributes, each tag attribute associated with a drop down menu comprising a plurality of display characteristics;

responsive to a selection of a display characteristic from the drop down menu, mapping the display characteristic to a tag in the tag cloud, each display characteristic representing one of the plurality of tag attributes;

modifying the tag cloud, wherein each tag is displayed in accordance with a display characteristic mapped to the tag by the interactive legend; and

wherein the tag attributes are rearranged, added, or removed from the interactive legend.

2. The computer implemented process of claim 1 wherein the plurality of display characteristics comprise: font color, font size, transparency, opacity, background color, borders, motion, underlines, italics, strikethroughs, three dimensional representation of depth, and shadowing.

3. The computer implemented process of claim 1 wherein the plurality of tag attributes comprise: popularity of an item, last update of an item, frequency of updates to an item, age of an item, size of an item, most recently accessed, and whether there have been comments or replies related to an item.

4. The computer process of claim 3 where the plurality of tag attributes further comprise: a custom tag attribute.

5. The computer implemented process of claim 1 further comprising: setting a sort criteria using one of the plurality of tag attributes and displaying the tag cloud with the plurality of tags ordered based upon the sort criteria.

6. The computer implemented process of claim 1 further comprising: displaying a plurality of details regarding a tag whenever a mouse cursor hovers over the tag in the tag cloud.

7. An apparatus for customizing a display of a tag cloud, the apparatus comprising:

a processor;

a memory connected to the processor;

an indexing application running in the memory, operable to extract tags from a collection of items and collect usage statistics related to each item;

a tag table file in the memory containing the indexed tags and statistics;

a tag cloud customizer program in the memory operable to display an interactive legend, in conjunction with the display of the tag cloud, the interactive legend comprising a plurality of tag attributes, each tag attribute associated with a drop down menu comprising a plurality of display characteristics;

responsive to a selection of a display characteristic from the drop down menu, mapping the display characteristic to a tag in the tag cloud, each display characteristic representing one of the plurality of tag attributes;

modifying the tag cloud, wherein each tag is displayed in accordance with a display characteristic mapped to the tag by the interactive legend; and

wherein the tag attributes are rearranged, added, or removed from the interactive legend.

8. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein the plurality of display characteristics comprise: font color, font size, transparency, opacity, background color, borders, motion, underlines, italics, strikethroughs, three dimensional representation of depth, shadowing and no display.

9. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein the plurality of tag attributes comprise: popularity of an item, last update of an item, frequency of updates to an item, age of an item, size of an item, most recently accessed, and whether there have been comments or replies related to an item.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 where the plurality of tag attributes further comprise: a custom tag attribute.

11. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein the tag cloud customizer program in the memory is further operable to set a sort criteria using one of the plurality of tag attributes and to display the tag cloud with the plurality of tags ordered based upon the sort criteria.

12. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein the tag cloud customizer program in the memory is further operable to save the mapped display characteristics to a style sheet file in the memory, and to generate the tag cloud based upon the tag table file and the style sheet file.

13. A computer readable memory containing a plurality of instructions configured to run on a processor of a computer to customize a display of a tag cloud, the plurality of instructions comprising:

a first instruction to display an interactive legend in conjunction with the display of the tag cloud, the interactive legend comprising a plurality of tag attributes, each tag attribute associated with a drop down menu comprising a plurality of display characteristics;

a second instruction, responsive to a selection of a display characteristic from the drop down menu, mapping the display characteristic to a tag in the tag cloud, each display characteristic representing one of the plurality of tag attributes;

a third instruction to modify the tag cloud, wherein each tag is displayed in accordance with a display characteristic mapped to the tag by the interactive legend; and

wherein the tag attributes are rearranged, added, or removed from the interactive legend.

14. The computer readable memory of claim 13 wherein the plurality of display characteristics comprise: font color, font size, transparency, opacity, background color, borders, motion, underlines, italics, strikethroughs, three dimensional representation of depth, shadowing and no display.

15. The computer readable memory of claim 13 wherein the plurality of tag attributes comprise: popularity of an item, frequency of updates to an item, how recently an item was accessed, age of an item, size of an item, most recently accessed, and whether there have been comments or replies related to an item.

16. The computer readable memory of claim 15 where the plurality of tag attributes further comprise: a custom tag attribute.

17. The computer readable memory of claim 13 further comprising: an instruction to set a sort criteria using one of the plurality of tag attributes and an instruction to display the tag cloud with the plurality of tags ordered based upon the sort criteria.