Visualized: Size of Planets

Statistical graphics vs infovisualization

"There are some statisticians who get it, but most seem to be stuck in the Tukey-Tufte school of thinking; unfortunately, most of them would even take that as a compliment."

 Robert Kosara

Link to article

On the Launch of Visually

Nathan Yau's (Flowing Data) Besprechung des neuen Visualization-Players Visually trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf:

I can't help but feel it's more about pretty pictures and traffic than it is about making sense of data...
For me, Visually is one of those sites that I want to like. There's just not enough there right now for me to get excited about it.

Nachzulesen hier 

Swiss World Atlas interactive

Explore Switzerland (and the rest of the world) with the interactive version of the Swiss World Atlas:

The Institute of Cartography of ETH Zurich (Federal Institute of Technology) was commissioned to develop the interactive atlas version. During the development the purpose of the project team is to regard the specifics of the SWA, the expectations of teachers just as current trends and ideas about modern geography lessons, sustainability and feasibility.

Splendor by Sebastian Schwinkendorf and Matthias Löwe

Splendor maps the photographs of landmarks in connection to the landmarks itself. As a result, each landmark can be characterized with respect to its "best viewed angle", the distance at which it is typically photographed, etc.

The data are from geotagged photographs on Panoramio and the Landmark-Database Qype

Link

Twitter polarizes

Previously, we used to have a national media, including newspapers and network TV, produced a fairly unidirectional message. It was like we were all forced to sit in on the same lecture, delivered by the big responsible adults who weren't supposed to favor either side. Today, we can now ignore those adults and break off into whatever little subgroups we like. We can easily listen to only the people we agree with, and the charts above show that this is in fact what seems to be happening. And that can't be good for our political dialogue.

Stanford University: Journalism's Voyage West

The Growth of US Newspapers, 1690-2011 from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

This visualization plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States. The data comes from the Library of Congress' "Chronicling America" project, which maintains a regularly updated directory of newspapers. 
Data visualization by the Rural West Initiative, Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University
Credits: Dan Chang, Krissy Clark, Yuankai Ge, Geoff McGhee, Yinfeng Qin and Jason Wang

Link to the interactive Version.

Cinemetrics: another movie visualization

But this one is interactive! Very nice work from Frederic Brodbeck:

cinemetrics from fb on Vimeo.

Link to cinemetrics.
The code is available here.

watch the book online after the jump

Moritz Stefaner: The Vizosphere

This map shows 1645 twitter accounts related to the topic of information visualization. The accounts were determined as follows: For a subjective selection of "seed accounts", the twitter API was queried for followers and friends. In order to be included into the map, a user account needed to have at least 5 links (i.e. follow or being followed) to one of these accounts. The size of the network nodes indicates the number of followers within this network.

made with gephi, embeded with visualizing player

Computable Document Format by Wolfram Alpha

Interaktive Visualisierungen erstellen ohhne Progtrammierungskenntnisse?
Ah, interessant...
Zur Darstellung der Visualisierungen wird ein Browser-Plugin benötigt. Uh, das Interesse schwindet wieder...
Da spielt es auch keine rolle mehr, dass die gesehenen Beispiele optisch nicht überzeugend sind und das Plugin etwas langsam reagiert. 

"understand" how "big" the us debt is

Looking for a online-dating-name?

The german dating agency eDarling "discovered", that usernames are related to the success in online-dating. 

So here are the names you should choose, when you're online-dating in switzerland:

The winners and losers for switzerland (% deviation from avarage clicks on profile):

In generally: choose a name popular among the folks at the main holiday-destination of you online-dating-hood.

Data via südostschweiz (Link)

Thats what the Visualizing Player can do:

Embeded Visualizing Player:

Embed visualizations in your blog was never so easy befor: go fullscreen and hit the play-button!

Example:
How healthy are our hospitals? by Lisa Strausfeld from Pentagram.

Cosmic 140 by iA, still available

The 140 most influential people on twitter, sorted by #name #handle #category #influence #activity. Plus: When they started tweeting and what they first said. It took quite some time until we had it in the shape we envisioned.
A0-Poster, super high quality paper, the parts that appear in grey on the file are PP-Varnish.

More Pictures, Info and a Video after the Jump!

Map of the swiss political landscape

by sotomo (Link)

Visualizing Player 1.0

And here comes the next big launch in the visualization sphere:
Visualizing.org announces the visualizing player 1.0,

the first-ever media player designed for data visualization.

What it does:

• A single frame that supports 7 formats and counting (HTML5, Java, Flash, PDF, Video,Image, URL)
• Experience visualizations in full screen with viewing tools tailored to your format

From the submission agreement:

We may present contests (called Challenges or an "Event" in the terms below) that permit you to submit a visualization based on specific criteria and may offer awards to some participants.

and

By submitting Visualization Content, you agree that such Visualization Content shall be licensed to members of the general public under the most recent version of the Creative Commons license known as the "share-alike, for attribution, non-commercial license" (the "Creative Commons License"), as defined at creativecommons.org.

 Link

iPhone Mapping

Since OpenPaths it is widely known that the iPhone constantly tracks your location. The video by Michael Kreil shows the movements of 880 different iPhones in Europe that have been analyzed for the month of April 2011.

Are you interested in funiculars?

The swiss Funicular Inventory (www.seilbahninventar.ch) lists almost all of the swiss funiculars. From the worldwide first touristic funicular to the underground Skymetro at the airport in zurich. Get very detailed information for all listed funiculars, an interactive map and lots of pictures. Explore them by mouse-click or order the printed brochure via denkmalpflege@bak.admin.ch. 

And another network platform...

Yesterday was the launch of visual.ly, a newnetworking platform for infographics and datavisualizations.

Once their web servers can handle the load, the new and the already much hyped website allows access to over 2,000 different infographic illustrations, uploaded by designers like JESS3 and David McCandless, and including a large collection of own infographics. Visual.ly has already attracted key partners in publishing, design and distribution, including The Atlantic, CNNMoney.com, eBay, GOOD Magazine, OMD, National Geographic, The Next Web, and Smirnoff. Each of these publications is allowed to upload its own graphics, which can then be embedded and shared via a Visual.ly-created embed code.

Link

Apropos Natural Gas Visualization

Stephen Few rückt wieder mal alles ins rechte Licht und vergisst dabei nicht allen mitzuteilen, was für lausige Datenvisualisierer David McCandless und Ben Fry sind. Recht hat er trotzdem.

Hier ein kleiner Auszug:
As Jayne (Steven Few's Ehefrau) began to read my review, she soon reached the place where I wrote that I’ve never seen an effective data visualization by McCandless and sighed. Her thoughts were, “Here he goes again,” fearing that my words might set off another firestorm of angry responses. Then she continued reading, and her attitude changed. Here’s what she said about the natural gas visualizations after finishing:

They make no sense whatsoever. I actually found myself getting angry as I reviewed them—primarily because it seems like a deliberate attempt on GE’s part to deceive—to make us think they care about an issue by posting pretty visualizations that, in reality, say nothing. GE and David McCandless should be ashamed! After reviewing these visualizations, it seems clear that GE doesn’t really care about the issue, they just want us to think that they do.

Read the full text here