I’ve been working on a project to display more information about web pages to users, surfacing bits of metadata that they might not have been aware of. I had envisioned a small bar graph, similar to the Page Rank display on the Google Toolbar, that showed privacy levels for different sites.

But then I thought, “What’s better than a horizontal bar?” So I dug out my Tufte books, did a little research, and decided upon the perfect visual representation for privacy, the most eloquent and elegant metaphor: I wanted something obvious yet still credible enough to do justice to the serious nature of personal privacy: A small, animated Privacy Bird. Complete with sound.

Damn. That’s been done. Sigh.