More than 150 years later, a Seattle-based technology firm istransforming Melvill's eloquent sentiments from words topictures--creating a potentially useful tool for commercial realestate and other industries. The five-year-old company, IntellectSpace, created anapplication called MarketVisual, whichinteractively shows relationships between people and companies.

"It creates on-demand maps that help to visualize and understandrelationships between people and companies. Think of it as 'sixdegrees of separation from Kevin Bacon', but for business,"explains Sandro Gvelesiani, CEO and president of IntellectSpace.The application draws on SEC disclosures, corporate announcementsand other unstructured data that is in the public domain toidentify and visualize complex relationships and spheres ofinfluence.

Using proprietary natural language processing, the applicationmaps the name of a person or business. The result is a diagram orKnowledge Map that reveals key interrelationships and spheres ofinfluence among companies, executives and institutions. "KnowledgeMaps connect the dots by explaining business and personalconnections, providing an at-a-glance understanding of complexties," Gvelesiani explains. "They help you visualize and understandthe relationships that drive decisions and createopportunities."