Simple Complexity

Who has the Oil? Map of Country usage and production

I’m sure I’ve posted this map before… but after spending nearly $70 on a tank of regular gas this afternoon (i drive a 4-door sedan) I couldn’t help but think back to this image and how perilous it seems.

The United States consumes more than 20,000,000 barrels of oil every day (more than 3 times any other country) but has less than 2% of the worlds remaining oil.

While energy efficient cars seem to be the no-brainer quick fix… I wonder if Americans are truly willing to sacrifice the feeling of satisfaction that many get when driving a behemoth of a car. (That’s why people drive Hummers, right? It’s not for the trunk space)

Popularity: 18% [?]

Posted in Random, Statistics, Visualization | No Comments »

Mapping the Rhythm and Flow of Literary Works

I found this at Cool Infographics.

Found on notcot.com, On The Map is a cool project by Stefanie Posavec that maps the rhythm and flow of literary works into some stunning visual posters.

Breaking a story down into chapters, paragraphs, sentences and finally individual words. Then color coded to capture the topics as they reappear throughout the story. The level of detail is really impressive.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Posted in Books, Random, Uncategorized, Visualization | No Comments »

Smashing Magazine Inspiration: Data Visualization and Infographics

Smashing Magazine is well designed… and so is their post on popular Infographics and Data Visualization.

I’ve taken the liberty of sharing some examples… check out the full article after the jump.

DIZZIA, Gregory M.
This is the documentation of every intimate relationship Gregory Dizzia has ever had. The data spans 23 years.

The main goal of data visualization is its ability to visualize data, communicating information clearly and effectivelty. It doesn’t mean that data visualization needs to look boring to be functional or extremely sophisticated to look beautiful.

Virtual Water
Simple, clean, elegant and effective. A double-sided poster visualizing the water footprint of products and nations.

Mapping the Blogosphere
This is what the blogosphere looks like

Megan Jaegerman
A review of Megan Jaegerman’s work by Edward Tufte. Notice how clean and legible the infographics are.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Posted in Business Intelligence, Interesting Sites, Visualization, infographic | No Comments »

America’s Most Sinful Cities - Interactive Map

I found this article at Flowing Data.

Forbes ranked and mapped cities based on the seven deadly sins. (Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride).

While the interactive map isn’t all that complex, it’s an interesting and enjoyable way to discover what Forbes believes to be America’s most sinful cities.

“For each sin we stretched our imagination to find a workable proxy–murder rates for wrath, per capita billionaires for avarice–then culled the available data sources to rank the cities.”

I’ve lived in and around Washington DC all my life…. maybe it’s the allure of a sinful city?

Washington DC Ranks:

• Avarice - #9
  • Greed isn’t confined to money… Power?
• Lust - #6
  • I can only conclude that I must not be hanging out with the right crowd
• Wrath - #7
• Hmmm… well, we do have SouthEast DC

So where’s Vegas? Las Vegas only ranks in the top ten in one category, Sloth (#3).

Popularity: 49% [?]

Posted in Data Mining, Interesting Sites, Visualization, infographic | No Comments »

oSkope - Highly Intuitive Visual Search

Sure, other search engines provide the ability to search for images and more, but it’s really how you interact with that information that’s important.

oSkope is a search assistant with a highly intuitive visual interface. oSkope lets you browse quickly through a large number of images and preview information with minimal paging.

For starters, I love the drag and drop feature on my search results. The feature mimics many of the coolest gadgets on the market today like the iPhone and the Microsoft Surface.

How it works:

1. Select favorite online service: Amazon, Ebay, Flickr, YouTube etc.
2. Drill down into subcategories via pull down menu or search function
3. Results appear as thumbnails in display area. (Thumbnails can be dragged and dropped to rearrange favorite items)
4. Hovering over image will display preview with link to original page
5. Registered users have the ability to drag favorite item into “My Folder” for future viewing.

You can switch between display modes, or “views”. Currently the following views are offered: grid, stack, pile, list, and graph.

While the various views add value by loading instantly and providing new ways of approaching your search results, the Graph View is the real winner among the group.

The graph view is special because it changes depending on the service you select. Your results are plotted against relevant axes. For example…

• Amazon.com (X = Sales Rank, Y = Price)
• Ebay.com (X = Time Left in Auction, Y = Price)
• Youtube.com (X = Date, Y = Ranking)

Of all the various visualized search engines I’ve come across, oSkope is definitely a favorite because of it’s unique and interesting way of letting me sift through my results.

Popularity: 57% [?]

Posted in Data Mining, Decision Making, Gadget, General Business, Visualization | No Comments »

50 Essential Knowledge Management Sites and Blogs

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Kudos to Lucas McDonell for assembling an excellent list of 50 Knowledge Management Sites. Great resource. Check out the details at his site

Popularity: 61% [?]

Posted in Business Intelligence, Interesting Sites, Random, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Casualties of War - NYTimes Interactive Visualization

Another interesting interactive information visualization from the NYTimes: Casualties of War.

Each United States service member who has died in Iraq and been identified by the Defense Department is represented by a small square to the right.

Learn about the individuals by clicking on any square to see information about that person

On another tab in the same interactive graphic, casualties of war are displayed for easier analysis.

Use the slider below to investigate the demographics and military status of U.S. service members who died during the war in Iraq.

However you feel about the war, this graphic presents facts and allows the viewer to develop their own impressions and opinions rather than packaging the same information with any sort of bias.

Popularity: 64% [?]

Posted in Data Mining, Statistics, Visualization | No Comments »

Where to Find the Best Open Source Software Applications (Mac & Windows)

I decided to see how difficult it was to find some suitable open source alternatives to usually expensive and proprietary applications.

My search led me to some great sites that make it easy to find the right open source application for any need.

For a simple list of the best free and open source software…

…This page should be a handy reference and a useful tool for getting more people to start using free and open-source software.

Open Source for the Mac can be found at OpenSourceMac.org.

Open Source for Windows can be found at OpenSourceWindows.org.

OpenSourceWindows.org and OpenSourceMac.org are the cleanest and easiest sites when trying to find basic and essential Open Source alternatives to commonly used applications.

While writing this post I also found this site, Osalt.com, Open Source as Alternative. I like how i can search for a proprietary software that I’m interested in, make my selection from search results, and browse the open source alternatives below.

Find open source software alternatives to well-known commercial software

A less user friendly but more extensive list of open source applications can be found at OpenSourceList.org.

Just for added coverage, here’s a relevant post that places very high on Digg,
The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives
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Also, check out my colleague Brahma Sen’s open source article he wrote for me a while back- Open Source Embraced by the Defense Community.

Happy Open Source Downloads…

Popularity: 70% [?]

Posted in Business Intelligence, General Business, Interesting Sites, Visualization | No Comments »

Cool Info Visualization Links from Last Week

Ok, so I’m still swamped with this proposal, but I wanted to make sure I shared some of the most interesting information visualization posts I’ve came across within the past week.

Heatmapping Your Productivity

The picture is a heat map of my daily productive capacity… the amount of productivity I am capable of in a given amount of time.

Charlie uses his productivity capacity heatmap to help determine things like:

• Why do I have more productive capacity at some times than others?
• How can I move from one level to the next?
• How should I plan my day?

Map of Creativity

Discovered at Cool Infographics, check out the Map of Creativity from the Next Generation Foundation.

The Map of Creativity is a user-friendly, interactive database of innovative educational projects throughout the world.

Invisible Journey

Found at Visual Complexity.

The visualization portrays invisible journeys through different cities, by different means of transportation, including walking paths and WI-FI mapping.

21 Ways to Visualize and Explore Your Email Inbox

Found at Flowing Data.

I’ve split them up into six categories - exploratory, analytic, mapping, metaphor, networks, and abstract.

Popularity: 76% [?]

Posted in Interesting Sites, Random, Uncategorized, Visualization | 1 Comment »

Google Visualization API

I’ve read a lot on this topic already as Google released a Visualization API for users and developers 2 days ago.

From the official Google Blog,

“Instead of delivering just one or two new types of reports, or a new visual map mashup, we decided to deliver a platform on which anyone, not just Google, could build the next best thing.

The Google Visualization API lets you access multiple sources of structured data that you can display, choosing from a large selection of visualizations. The Google Visualization API also provides a platform that can be used to create, share and reuse visualizations written by the developer community at large.

Visit the Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery to get a feel for what sort of visualizations Google is expecting their API to be used for.

I was wondering when this would become open-source.

I’ve been using a similar technology, Xcelsius, which was bought by Business Objects and incorporated into their reporting suite to accomplish the same type of easy dashboard/widget building that Google is now attempting to make open and free to all.

Google Visualization API gadgets are gadgets that can access data sources in an easy manner. For developers this means writing an application only once to be reused over multiple data sources. For users, this means enjoying a wealth of new visualization options over many types of data sources.

This is a step in the right direction. I’m an avid believer that people will make better, more convincing decisions if they are equipped with ways to synthesize the information in an intuitive manner, leading to a confident decision based on the facts.

Popularity: 81% [?]

Posted in Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Decision Making, Gadget, General Business, Natural Language, Visualization | No Comments »