information aesthetics

Visualizing the Demographic Reach of Yahoo! Homepage Stories

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:44:02 +0100

Yahoo! recently released a dedicated data visualization website [yahoo.com] to highlight their Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.), a service that aims to personalize the Yahoo! experience depending on a collection of demographic (e.g. gender and age) and geographic (e.g. cities) variables, in combination with personal interests (e.g. Finance, Sports, Health).

Accordingly, the visualization allows to explore the relevant content of their homepage according to a set of user-selected parameters, so that one can solve questions like: "What is the most popular story for females between 18 and 24?". The shown content reaches back up to 24 hours ago. Each separate story can be further analyzed in terms of popularity over time, plus its demographic reach of the audience that actually clicked on it. Notably, the floating 3D globe of particles consists of news stories.

Via @johnmaeda.

The State of the Union Address 2012 - Infographically Enhanced

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:41:27 +0100

Similar to the original approach in 2011, this year's State of the Union was made available online in a so-called 'enhanced' version, which basically consisted of a split-screen video that shows President Obama giving his speech on one side, and a large collection contextual information and facts, as well as infographics, on the other. In other words: 1 hour and 5 minutes worth of high-level political facts, captured in 102 unique slides, of which about 26 can be labelled as visualization of some kind.

You can watch the 'enhanced' version of the State of the Union 2012 below or at the White House website [whitehouse.gov] itself.

Importantly, there are already some critical reviews available, about this year's infographics [thewhyaxis.info], but also about those of last year [fastfedora.com]. These reviews are quite worthwhile to read, as they point out some potential discrepancies in terms of the graphical representation, and the narrative it tries to convey.

Time Maps: Morphing a Country According to its Travel Time

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:30:35 +0100

In the current age, we tend to think in time rather than absolute distance when estimating our itineraries. Accordingly, the beautiful Timemaps [timemaps.nl] by Vincent Meertens of Graph[s]ic shows the required travel times within The Netherlands by public transportation through morphing its silhouette along a colorful, circular time measure.

Users are able to select any train station location (by clicking inside the map), and time of day (via a slider). As a result, the map will expand at night, and shrink in the morning due to the availability of trains. The color coding corresponds to the number of hours (see legend below the map). If all goes well, the map should even be made available on iOS and Android.

See also Travel Time Tube Map and Worldmapper.

Via @ajdant.

TEDx Talk on Molecular Animation: Combining Cinema and Biology

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:35:04 +0100

Right now, while you are reading this article, billions of your cells are busy replicating your DNA information. Although molecules are smaller than the wavelength of light, and thus we have no way to directly observe them, can we still somehow visualize these processes?

Biomedical animator and MacArthur Foundation nominee Drew Berry of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research presents in a recent TEDx talk of less than 9 minutes, the state-of-the-art in molecular animation. He shows an accurate representation of the actual biological processes that happen on molecular scale, even at the correct speed2.

Next to a movie that originates back from around 2003 that focuses on the replication of DNA, he also shows a newer version that has been accomplished through "updated science, updated technology", revealing how DNA mitosis through a nifty process of some quite 'mechanical' signal broadcasting system. At the end, he highlights the processes behind a malaria infection of a human child via a mosquito bite, through invasion of cellular tissues including the liver and blood. malaria spreads in your blood.

More biological visualization videos can for instance be found at WEHI-TV and Harvard's BioVisions Lab.

Watch the TEDx talk and some of the full versions of the shown movies below.

What Stamen Design Accomplished in 2011 (Cool Maps)

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:48:12 +0100

Infosthetics readers might know Stamen Design as one of the front-runners and innovators that drove the popularity of data visualization. With works like Oakland Crimespotting, Cabspotting and Trulia Hindsight, they combined the concept of mapping with new kinds of geo-located data. After some mass audience exposure through online live Twitter visualizations alongside various MTV awards, Stamen somehow disappeared a bit from the infosthetics radar.

For those who are curious on what Stamen was up to, Erik just published an overview of
what they did in 2011 [stamen.com]. Many of their works can be viewed online, such as a very stylized view of the Netherlands above [vpro.nl], interactive data graphics conveying the G8 and EU's spending commitments to Africa [one.org], a map showing various US broadband statistics [broadbandmap.gov], or travel time and housing prices map for the Bay Area [onebayarea.org].

Others show an increased interested in alternative media, including the iPhone (TripAdvisor City Guides), the iPad ("The World" app for National Geographic), television (more colorful MTV hyperactive awards, but also a map for an Oprah TV show [oprah.com]) or a wish to equip inflight Wifi-enabled laptops [mondowindow.com] with real-time 3D maps.

Additional results include mapping libraries that have been made freely available, such as those that focus on only showing buildings ("[map=yes]) or displaying dots on maps ("DotSpotting").

You can now also own a piece of Stamen geographical mapping in your home, for instance in the form of a printed art work [20x200.com], or, why not, very beautiful and fully-localized blankets and napkins [softcities.net].

Ushahidi: Free Software for Data Collection, Visualization & Mapping

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:12:31 +0100

Ushahidi [ushahidi.com] is a non-profit tech company that develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. "Ushahidi" means "testimony" in Swahili. It was also the title of a website that mapped reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Accordingly, its slogan is "Changing the World - One Map at the Time". Therefore, Ushahidi aims to empower organizations and people all over the world to increase public awareness around social events like elections, local crises or resources. It provides free and open access to tools that facilitate the aggregation, presentation and mapping of relevant datasets online. For instance, check the "Syria Tracker" website here.

The platform has been deployed in the DR Congo to monitor unrest, Al Jazeera used it to track violence in Gaza, and it helped monitor the 2009 Indian Elections. Not surprisingly, Ushahidi also won the (Red) Webby Award 2011 for social innovation.

For data collection, Ushahidi proposes SwiftRiver, a platform that helps people make sense of a large body of information. The visual presentation of this data is accomplished through the so-called Ushahidi Platform, which provides an interactive map and timeline, and is able to connect to real-time data streams such as email, Twitter or web-forms. The most powerful feature is CrowdMap, which offers the ability to download the core application and deploy it independently, for instance to suit a community's needs.

Lichtreise: Highlighting Travel Itineraries with Long-Exposure Photos

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:49:52 +0100

Lichtreise [incom.org] by Advanced Media students Christopher Pietsch and Luis Grass is a visualization of a specific holiday itinerary. What makes this work special, is how simple non-digital technology has been used to generate the map: the basis is a long-time exposure picture, which was lit with a physically moving batter-powered UV-LED light and a battery. The map itself was lit in a separate step, which all combined resulted in a beautifully "rendered" infographic.

Via @tillnm.

Carbon Calculator: Revealing Potential Climate Change Mitigation

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:30:23 +0100

The Carbon Calculator [appspot.com] developed by Vizzuality is an interactive mapping tool that reveals the potential contribution of any selected area in the world to climate change mitigation.

Using the data delivered by CBD Secretariat (Convention on Biological Diversity), LifeWeb (CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas) and UNEP-WCMC (UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre), the online tool calculates rough estimates of user-selected areas on a wide set of parameters, including: the carbon stored in above and below ground live biomass and soil, the percentage overlap with existing protected areas, the status of forests, the restoration potential inside selected areas, the maximum carbon sequestration potential.

As an original approach, the mapping tool allows users to draw a line around their area(s) of interest, or select any protected area, from which the detailed information and statistics are shown.

Via @JanWillemTulp.

Visualizing Statistical Darts Strategies: Where to Best Aim Your Darts

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:29:46 +0100

Nick Berry at DataGenetics has one of those dream jobs you never knew existed: Nick is an expert in data analytics, specialized in the online gaming world. In his recent blog post "A geek plays darts" [datagenetics.com], he demonstrates his interest in gaming, statistics and visualization by diving into the world of dart strategies.

In short, the blog post attempts to solve the question of determining the most optimal location on the board for players with different skill sets in darts: when one is not well experienced in playing darts, he might need to aim for not the highest scoring region, but for a large expanse where there are more "middle of the road point" values.

Statistically, the probability of a where a dart lands is based on a target and standard deviation, which in itself depends on the skill of the darts player: a good darts player has a low standard deviation, and the shots will be closely clustered around their intended objective. When the according skill-based Gaussian curve is swept over the board, the expected score for each possible aiming location can be calculated and represented. In the resulting visualizations, color is used to represent the expected score. In some bullseye graphs, 3D is used to provide a better idea of the according score distributions.

Nick also describes a method to estimate one's own scoring performance. It thus turns out that when you succeed in throwing half the darts inside the outer bull of the board (so with a accuracy of about 2cm), then you are (statistically) a hard player for any amateur to beat.

Thnxk Stan!

World Travel versus Global Communication As Recorded by Twitter

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:12:17 +0100

The maps from Eric Fischer are ever beautiful and insightful. He is the guy behind the surprising maps that compare the locations where people use Flickr versus Twitter, that reveal the geographical distributions of races, and that contrast the places that are photographed by tourists versus locals.

Eric's newest work [flickr.com] shows the locations between different tweets of the same people (green), and compares those to the locations of people that @reply to each other (purple), as recorded by Twitter between May and September 2011. The concept to derive human travel from Twitter data is a bit similar to Jer Thorps' Just Landed, although here the locations are completely determined by the differences in geotags of the tweets, and not partly by the location as mentioned in the Twitter profile.

Also check out his personal geography of 2011.

Mapping Every Accident on the Roads of Great Britain

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:13:35 +0100

"Every death on every road in Great Britain 1999-2010" [bbc.co.uk] by the BBC shows the accumulation of 2,396,750 unique crashes that occurred between 1999 and 2010, on a single, beautifully rendered map. It also contains a small series of animated time-lapse movie that aggregates the crashes per hour and per weekday. The intensity of brightness shows where road collisions have been more frequent.

The BBC also offers alternative means to explore the data, such as a few revealing infographics (showing that most pedestrian crashes happen around school home time; bikers account for 1% of all accidents, yet leading to 21% of all fatalities, etc.) and an interactive map to allows for investigating neighborhoods of choice.

The maps seem to be based on the same dataset that also drove Road Casualties UK 2000 - 2010 by ITOWorld.

The Dot and the Line: a Romance in Lower Mathematics

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:30:25 +0100

The animated movie titled "The Dot and the Line: a Romance in Lower Mathematics" from 1965 was directed by ~~Juck~~ Chuck Jones, who is also known from animated cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. The film retells the story of the book with the same title, which was originally written by American architect and children's book author Norton Juster.

The story details a straight line who falls in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild squiggle. The line, willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself, giving rise to shapes so complex he has to letter his sides and angles to keep his place.

The movie won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1966.

Watch the movie below.

Via @blprnt and Signal vs. Noise.

See also:
- Disney Mars Colonization Movie (1957)
- Powers of 10 Movie (1977)
- Eames' Information Machine (1958)

A Year in Snapshots: Revealing where Photos are Taken in the World

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:11:29 +0100

Mobile travel guide provider Triposo has a natural interest in location-based data, as its free travel guides are automatically generated from a large collection of open datasets. To show off their expertise, they have recently created "A Year Long Snapshots around the World" [triposo.com], a short movie that reveals the exact locations in the world where pictures were taken, and that for each day of the year.

In short, the movie shows a world map in which pixels light up according to the relative amount of pictures taken. As the resulting animation is too dense and fast to make sense of, they have provided a series of snapshots to highlight some remarkable trends and outliers. In particular, they are requesting advice for some hugely popular event on 30 November that is reflected by an immense amount of photos taken everywhere in the world (although they suspect a default camera setting to be the real reason).

Watch the movie below.

See also iPhone Fireflies, NYTimes Web Traffic, FourSquare Edits, Worldwide Android Activations, Twitter Dots, Wake Up Tweets, OpenStreetMap Edits and Nuclear Weapons between 1945 and 1998 for more data-driven, meaningfully flashing dots on a global map.

Citeology: Visualizing the Relationships between Research Publications

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:16:59 +0100

Justin Matejka at Autodesk Research has recently released the sophisticated visualization "Citeology: Visualizing Paper Genealogy" [autodeskresearch.com]. The visualization shows the 3,502 unique academic research papers that were published at the CHI and UIST, two of the most renowned human-computer interaction (HCI) conferences, between the years 1982 and 2010.

All the articles are listed by year and sorted with the most cited papers in the middle, whereas the 11,699 citations that connect the articles to one another are represented by curved lines. Selecting a single paper reveals colors the papers from the past that the paper referenced in blue, in addition to the future articles which referenced it, in brownish-red. Titles, The resulting graphs can be explored as a low-rez interactive screen, or as a high-rez, static PDF graph.

Little fact: the 1985 paper titled "A theory of stimulus-response compatibility applied to human-computer interaction" seemed to have created the longest chain of paper-to-paper citations.

Be sure to also check their previous visualization project, "Command Usage Arc Diagrams", revealing the interaction patterns of AutoCAD software, based on over 60 million commands generated by anonymized users.

Comparing the Human Development of Countries with Star Plot Shapes

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:32:18 +0100

This post was written by Gregor Aisch, a freelance information visualizer and part-time data journalist. He blogs at vis4.net and tweets under @drivenbydata.

Worldshapin [worldshap.in] lets users study the relationships between various factors such as health, carbon footprint, workplace equality, living standard, population and education between countries, or compared to average values of continents or the world at large. Therefore, the project visualizes data taken from the Human Development Report 2011, and plots it on a stylized smoothed star plot. In effect, the world, continents and countries are represented as unique shapes based on how low or high they fare on 6 indicators.

The project is created by Carlo Zapponi, already known for projects like People Movin or A World of Tweets, in collaboration with Vasundhara Parakh.