http://www.ebookmap.net/maps.htm

http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html

At first sight, it appears to be a static, cluttered diagram with multicoloured, overlapping squares. Really, it is an extremely powerfulway of presenting dynamics of emerging e-publishing industry. R2 Consulting has constructed these eBook Industry Maps to "reflect evolving business models among publishers, conversion houses, digital distribution companies, eBook vendors, online retailers, libraries, library vendors, authors, and many others. These maps are 3-dimensionaloffering viewers both a high-level orientation to eBook landscape and an in-depth look at multiple eBook models and partnerships that have formed within each one." Pass your mouse over any of squares and a virtual floodgate opens - a universe of interconnected and hyperlinked names, a detailed atlas of who does what to whom.

eBookMap.net is one example of a relatively novel approach to databases and web indexing. The metaphor of cyber-space comes alive in spatial, two and three dimensional map-like representations of world of knowledge in Cybergeography's online "Atlas". Instead of endless, static and bi-chromatic lists of links - Cybergeography catalogues visual,recombinant vistas with a stunning palette, internal dynamics and an intuitively conveyed sense of inter-relatedness. Hyperlinks are incorporated in topography and topology of these almost-neural maps.

"These maps of Cyberspaces - cybermaps - help us visualise and comprehend new digital landscapes beyond our computer screen, in wires of global communications networks and vast online information resources. The cybermaps, like maps of real-world, help us navigate new information landscapes, as well being objects of aesthetic interest. They have been created by 'cyber-explorers' of many different disciplines, and from all corners of world. Some of maps ... in Atlas of Cyberspaces ... appear familiar, using cartographicconventions of real-world maps, however, many of maps are much more abstract representations of electronic spaces, using new metrics and grids."

These are good examples of what www.brightplanet.com call "Deep Web" (previously inaccurately described as "Unknown or Invisible Internet"). They believe that Deep Web is 500 times size of "Surface Internet" (a portion of which is spidered by traditional search engines). This translates to c. 7500 TERAbytes of data (versus 19 terabytes in whole known web, excluding databases of search engines themselves) - or 550 billion documents organized in 100,000 deep web sites. By comparison, Google, most comprehensive search engine ever, stores 1.4 billion documents in its immense caches at www.google.com. The natural inclination to dismiss these pages of data as mere re-arrangements of same information is wrong. Actually, this underground ocean of covertintelligence is often more valuable than information freely available or easily accessible on surface. Hence ability of c. 5% of these databases to charge their users subscription and membership fees. The average deep web site receives 50% more traffic than a typical surface site and is much more linked to by other sites. Yet it is transparent to classic search engines and little known to surfing public.