Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘visualization’ Category

Embedding TED Videos

Posted in blogosphere, visualization, tagged , , , on 15 April 2009 |

Nice. Can now embed TED talks on hosted wordpress blogs. Here’s the how-to.

TED talks reliably provide me with fascinating ideas — they’re about as good an argument for the value of online video as you could hope for. And now they’re even easier to share.

Below is the first TED talk I ever saw. Fascinating animated charts! Cool insights into international development! And a nice call to make publicly paid-for data collections publicly available.

Also very cool that the TED folks releases their content under a CC license.

Read Full Post »

AC/DC ASCII Art

Posted in design, visualization, tagged , , , , , , , on 28 October 2008 | 2 Comments »

via Blogito Ergo Sum: Hells Cells

This is definitely going to be tagged as “weird”

AC/DC has released an animated ASCII art version of their video for their latest single Rock’n'Roll train. Why? From the band’s website:

AC/DC smashes through your firewall with real rock ‘n’ roll! Download the spreadsheet to watch the Rock N Roll Train video in all it’s Low Definition™ glory!

Oh those rock’n'roll rebels… retro 80s ASCII art is actually pretty appropriate for a band that’s older than dirt.

I haven’t had the chance to take the actual spreadsheet for a whirl (I only have OpenOffice here at home), but I got a taste of what it’s like through the promo for it on YouTube.

(yeah the tune sounds just like every other AC/DC song ever released, but that’s neither here nor there is it?)

Read Full Post »

Chartjoke

Posted in visualization, tagged , , , , on 29 September 2008 | 2 Comments »

In the vein of GraphJam, here’s a funny little pie chart joke.

Attribution unknown.

Attribution unknown.

Spotted via blowup, weheartit.com, infosthetics, Logic Nest.

Update: of couse this *was* posted to graphjam – back on 18 Sept 2008. Attribution on that post is to one Jamie Schimley. Brilliant work, Jamie.

Read Full Post »

Monday Morning Eye Candy: Polar Ice Cap Melt Animation

Posted in images, visualization, tagged , , , , , , , , on 29 September 2008 |

Animation of the the 2008 arctic polar cap melt — apparently not quite as extreme as last year’s record-setter, but close. And the rate of melt in August was unprecedented.

yup

Click the image for the link to the animation

Source: NASA’s Godard Space Flight Center. Spotted via Maryland Weather.

I also like this graph that they did, showing the 2008 minimum against the historical average. They give it to you in map form and as a line graph. I might have improved the contrast in the map so that the outline of the median minimum stands out more, but that’s just me.

Nice map

Click the image to see full size version.

Read Full Post »

Data Visualization: Infographics Open Your Eyes

Posted in design, images, visualization, tagged , , , , , on 9 September 2008 | 5 Comments »

Spotted recently in the NYTimes: “Lines and Bubbles and Bars, Oh My! New Ways to Sift Data“

Nice quote near the end on why infographics and visualization can help you when you are working with data:

Presenting results in a static spreadsheet or table may do the job. “But sometimes it’s like driving with your eyes closed,” he [Ben Schneiderman, dubbed in the article as "a pioneer in information visualization"] said. “With visualization, it might be possible to open your eyes and see something that will help you” — for instance, patterns, clusters, gaps or outliers in the data.

I had this exact experience the other day – I was working with some info on spending over the last several  years. It was a very simple table, but I was getting distracted by the individual numbers, unable to see if there was a pattern. So I popped it into a simple line graph and zap! I understood the trend instantly — it was downward, which in this particular case was very much to my liking.

Add to that the interactive and community aspects of the current data viz boom online, and then you can see how the Interwebs is doing for charts’n'graphs what it’s already done for music, video, news and most forms of textual information.

Aside: the article is mainly a profile of IBM’s Many Eyes dataviz app/community site. Which I keep meaning to check out more, but have yet to really dive in. Others in the same vein that I’ve heard tell of: Swivel, Track’n'graph.

And of course the NYT themselves are purveyors of fine interactive infographics. One of my fave examples of NYT brand infocandy:”The Ebb and Flow of Movies” – I revel in the swirly forms – all it needs is playback controls as well as the slider and it would be perfect.

Here’s a nice screen shot of the Ebb and Flow infographic in action – pretty stuff!

screen capture from NYTimes' interactive infographic on hollywood box office data

oooh, swirly swirly - and nice fall colours too

Read Full Post »

Radiohead’s House of Cards: Everything is Data

Posted in collaboration, visualization, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 16 July 2008 |

Interesting that despite the fact that Radiohead’s sound hasn’t progressed since their Kid A/Amnesiac breakthrough back in the day, the band continues to keep my attention in other ways.

They’ve just released a very cool video that was created using rotating laser scanners, 3D imaging and data visualization techniques — and no film or cameras.

Says the director of the video, James Frost (who’s done videos for the Flaming Lips among others):

In a weird way it’s a direct reflection of where we are in society… that everything is data. Everything around us is data-driven in some shape or form, and we’re so reliant on it now. It seems like our lives are digital, and so in that sense, it definitely felt apt.

Actually, that is as good an explanation for the current data visualization craze as I’ve heard yet.

Aesthetically, “House of Cards” reminds me a little of Tron, crossed with those toy boxes with rows of movable cylindrical metal pins that make a 3D contour when you press your hand or face on them (what the heck are they called?).

And Google is totally getting in on the action – Google Code is also hosting the video, as well as a “making of” clip (where I got the quote from the director above) and assorted other goodies for programmers who want to do remixes/mashups.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of making the data and source code available. There’s already 15 videos posted to the official YouTube group. Most focus on fiddling with the image data - this one is neat – but there’s already one that takes a hack at both the visual and auditory channel.

Read Full Post »

GraphJam!

Posted in design, images, visualization, tagged , , , , , , , on 4 July 2008 | 5 Comments »

I love that data visualization fever has gripped the interwebs. A well-constructed graph or chart lets me instantly grasp an idea way faster than a textual explanation can, even if it’s really well written. A testament to the power of visual communication.

But as with any hyped trend, there’s the risk of oversupply — with data visualization, the main risk is an excess of shoddy or pointless infographics that actually hinder understanding. Like using Excel’s chart wizard without tweaking the god-awful presets.

And then there’s GraphJam (“pop culture for people in cubicles”). The site is a raging parody of data visualization’s current popularity — GraphJam treats inforgraphics as jokes. Here’s a typical example, complete with cute typo in the title:

I especially love that this graph actually made me look up the lyrics to the song. It would have been absolutely perfect if the label for the red line had read “Pink champagne on ice.”

Read Full Post »

Fiddling With Wordle

Posted in design, visualization, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , on 25 June 2008 | 1 Comment »

A while back I read “What’s Up With Tag Clouds?” (PDF) over at Perceptual Edge – the paper noted that word clouds were mostly ineffective visualizations based on design criteria – they don’t tend to have a strong visual centre and they don’t lead your eye through the information in a useful way.

Since then, I’ve discovered Wordle.

This cool little web app addresses some of the design issues with word clouds – when I was playing with it, I found that the most important terms really pop, especially when strong colours are used. It’s cool to see that there’s customization available – choosing fonts and colour palettes and alignment options and so on.

Here’s a couple of clouds I made.

word cloud made from titles of Industry Canada\'s publications

This one is built from the titles of the 95 publications that were released by Industry Canada in 2007 and so far in 2008 (Industry Canada is the federal government Department that I work for). Pretty much what I’d expect – “Business” and “Small” and “Canada” and “Canadian” are the big terms. And small business is a big part of what Industry Canada does.

Next up:

Word cloud made from titles of news releases issued by Industry Canada so far in 2008

This one is made from the titles of the 71 news releases issued by Industry Canada so far this year. The prominence of the word “BizPal” stands out – but then again there have been a LOT of news releases (27 to be exact) about this program this year. The other thing that pops out are the two verbs, “appointed” and “launched” – decisions were made and things were done…

I didn’t play with the new options for keeping words together, which would definitely change how these clouds look.

Read Full Post »

Twingly: real time blogging visualized

Posted in blogosphere, twingly, visualization on 15 March 2008 |

I stumbled across the Twingly screensaver today. Wow. WOW.

That little screencast video I’ve embedded doesn’t do it justice.

If you want to get a sense of how loud the chatter of the blogosphere is, run this little thingy. It visualizes blog activity across the globe in real time. Aside from the fact that it looks really cool — and I mean really cool — for me it shows that the blogosphere really is a very big deal, all over the world. So many people, so many voices and stories. Such abundance!

Added bonus – this little app lets me link to the blog posts that it’s plotting too!

I was gonna try to write something profound about what this all means, but …
Ah, whatever, I’ll just go back to staring slack-jawed at how cool it looks.

Read Full Post »

Lorem ipsum data visualization

Posted in semantics, visualization on 18 February 2008 | 1 Comment »

Stumbled across this tool for creating word tree visualizations the other day. Fascinating, but I haven’t yet figured out what word trees would be good for. I suppose I could use them on my writing to analyze my style… to see if I use the same words or turns of phrase over and over.

So I was playing with word trees using the good old “lorem ipsum” text. But I don’t think that this classic (five centuries old!) piece of nonsense text, used to get people to focus on design rather than content, is quite the right thing for a word tree. Not long enough so not enough words that repeat. And no meaning! Still, looks neat.

Lorem ipsum text visualized as a word tree starting with “ipsum”

Sidebar: gotta love the handy Lorem Ipsum generator!

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.