"News Dots scans all the articles from major publications—about 500 a day—and submits them to Calais ... Each time two tags appear in the same story, this tool tallies one connection between them. ... s this tool scans hundreds of stories, this network grows rapidly, and "communities" begin to form among the tags. ... The news network that results is visualized using Slate's custom News Dots tool, which is built using an open-source Actionscript library called Flare."