Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Very cool indeed. I’d love to replicate some of them. ‘Experimental’ might be a better word than ‘modern,’ until they catch on and show their utility above a more standard (’traditional’) approach.

I don’t know if any are open source but some of the visuals are made with the help of Processing, which you should check out if you’re interested in doing something similar without a ton of programming.

Nice list guys! Great work!
This is a pretty cool project to I found a couple weeks back, Human Brain Cloud, not quite as extensive as some of the above examples, but cool none the less.

Holy crap! That flickr clock is wicked and the Ubrowser is tripped out. Nice find on these.

Amazing! Where to learn some methods of data visualisation?

Great!

This is a pretty good list! I wasn’t aware of many of these sites. I also posted a collection of unique data/infoviz links last year:

Dataesthetics: The Power and Beauty of Data Visualization

Brilliant list. I had no idea there were such ideas floating around. This isn’t just a smart way of displaying data but I think it is rather inspirational for other mediums.

i never knew data visualisation was such a big thing. We are manipulating so much of data daily [more the data, more happy we are :) ] and i never thought about its options…..

wonderful resource. so much to learn and understand. you have been doing a very nice job. its blocked here[they say you are a 'download' site :P ], sometimes i have to use a proxy site. but its worth.

thanx a lot :)

Absolutely great!

It exists a french search engine which corresponds to your article subject:
Kartoo

KartOO is a metasearch engine with visual display interfaces. When you click on OK, KartOO launches the query to a set of search engines, gathers the results, compiles them and represents them in a series of interactive maps through a proprietary algorithm

Superb. Your best list yet.

Whenever SmashingMagazine so much as coughs it makes it to the Digg homepage, Delicious popular and generates hoards of comments and linkbacks.

Very nice!

You guys just don’t stop! Nice research, you guys dig like them google folks.

I loved this stuff, I think if will be a tremendous resource for K-12 teachers especially for learning disabled students, please try to present this material in teachers conventions and teachers publications.

Wonderful post, I love inventions in the field of data visualization. I think I will have to write a post referring to your post — it’s a great read!

If any are interested in the Hurricane Katrina data-visualization project, here is the url:

http://livesconnected.com

Thank you, these are grrreat!

Kunal Anand also wrote a cool Python script for “Visualizing my del.icio.us tags“

Thank you, these are great visualization&(great view point). We”l live and see.

One more cool site for link visualization is a Walk2Web. It makes cool graphs of incoming and outgoing links. Every link has screenshots, tags, rating…

This is the first time I’ve been to some of these sites. A lot of them like Newsmap totally blew my mind!

Good list.
Those interested in search visualization could find searchCrystal of interest, since it lets you search and visually compare multiple engines in one place. You compare, remix and share results from web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines as well as Flickr images or RSS feeds.

Beautiful stuff! Thanks for your interesting article. I also did datavisualisation as part of my degree in graphic design. Take a look at Data visualisation of a social network.

I love the Trendmap 2007! Cool! Keep up the good post!

wow. absolutely impressing!!!

Again a great collection of wonderful “Must see’s” out on the internet. I didn’t know that data can be such faszinating. Thank you for your great work, folks – I’m new to this blog but I must say: I really like it :-)

All the best from Salzburg, Austria

Wow, I wonder how long did it take to pull that list. Thanks for the resources.

Outstanding list!

Another good site for data visualization is Radical Cartography, which is not so much radical as informative. Example: mapping income to population of the largest 25 metro areas shows that some cities have “income donuts” of wealthier suburbs surrounding a poorer city core, while others have wedges that radiate out from one area:

http://www.radicalcartography.net/?cityincome

Wow that was brilliant,a good piece of collection.

Wow, this is an amazing resource. I have recently become interested in this field, and I am very excited about the directions that it is going.

Hi,

I’ve been passioned by data visualization for quite some time. Thanks for putting together this data, it’s quite useful to me. I think that you should add the Idea Line of Martin Wattenberg: http://www.whitney.org/arport/commissions/idealine.shtml
to the list.

This is a very beatiful and concise method to display chronological information.
Best Regards,

Cristian

Wow!!
thanks for this list !!
simply fab!

One I liked very much was this one: mapping all sorts of data to a world map, sizing countries to show the values for each country: http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/index.html

This is an excellent site for visual information. What I don’t see is something like FYI Visual or Fractal Edge. These would make for nice additions.

Along these lines, I have been noting a lone ranger with an axe to grind out in the blogs, who appears to consider himself keeper of the visual display…

What I mean is FYI Corporation has developed some interesting technology for displays of massive amounts of information. While it’s not an all encompassing visual technology (meaning it requires additional visual support for some kinds of information, particularly where proportion is important), it enables anomalies to become readily apparent from dense displays.

Seems there is a lone ranger out there with an axe to grind against this company and its product, and has single handedly launched a tirade and personal attacks against even its employees. It is unclear why he has such a personal vendetta against FYI Corporation, but it’s clear that he does.

I contacted FYI Corporation employees and they told me that when challenged, the lone ranger was unable to show example data they provided in dense form on a display, and instead retreated to the common convention of low density dashboard configurations. For instance, they said that when asked to show hundreds of multidimensional values on a single screen with his approach (as can be done with FYI Visual) he was unable to do it. An FYI Visual representative said that they invited him to participate in a study to compare his approach to showing 850 generators consisting of 6 metrics to their way he refused to participate. I think I see why…

He relies completely on anecdotes and references to other people’s work because he appears to be ill-equipped to address the problem. He appears to hold himself out to be an expert, but his education is in Religious Studies, which makes sense given his Crusade against FYI Visual.

We have been using FYI Visual for two years and the problem it solves is unparalleled by any other technologies we have examined for high display density of time-sensitive information -the kind that does not fit onto a dashboard or shown with hundreds of lines on a graph.

When ever I read such personal attacks as that of this lone ranger, I consider the source, and in this case, the source seems quite dubious.

I enjoy sites like this one that provides examples and let’s consumers pick what works for them.

Wow, a great collection of stunning visualizations! One of the best blog entries I have ever read!

If you digg this, you will also love http://infosthetics.com/

I like shape of song (aesthetically) but cannot figure out what that is supposed to represent?

Looking good but not all of them seem to be convenient.

Absolutely fantastic. Mind opening. Thanks.
_Marc

Interesting list. After spending the last few months studying Edward Tufte’s “The visual display of quantitative information” and related works – I wonder what he would have to say about some of these?

Everybody’s mind works differently, and I suspect that men & women would find different aspects of these graphs intriguing,

I must be getting old. I found the websites and bubble-ups/mash-ups too hard to follow.

tom mayo
grand rapids, mi

Go beyond the math and look at the science of visualization. Here is a periodic table of visualization techniques, categorized into different areas of specialization.

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

It’s a great reference guide when trying to come up with the right diagram for a doc or presentation!

This is a terrific list. Thank you. For finding data and traditional graphs of data, as well as a tool for displaying graphs of data in slideshow format, we have built Data360.

http://www.data360.org

Best regards, Tom Paper

I can not believe it ! Even after I’ve look at it ! It’s so amazing ! Wonderful work !

Re: Comment #91: In the interests of full disclosure, I work as a contract technical writer for The Runge Group, the owners of Fractal Technologies and the FracSIS software product.

Heres a Name Wall that I made. Sadly it only works in FF:
http://tnw.animenetworx.net

With these techniques, and by combining certain ones of them, we edge closer to bringing to life the Glass Bead Game of Hermann Hesse…

(eye)nspiring.

Great article. I’m also very interested in these ideas, as they really bring together social science, math, software and programming, and art. Interacting with data means a lot more than passively seeing it (like a standard chart) — you start to bring your own ideas and interests into what’s being collected and displayed. With so much information available, having holistic and dynamic ways of showing *your* interests is becoming more and more interesting :: Learning 2.0.

If anyone is interested in creating things like this, or if you like to work with sound, video, 3D, or MIDI, do yourself a favor and check out the program Max / MSP / Jitter. Originally designed around music and MIDI, with recent additions for manipulating video and images, this graphical programming environment deals with all data very simply and in an abstract fashion. That means one can route, mix, display, and save your data in any form you want, leading to all kinds of new understandings.

I used to work with code-based languages but have gladly made this switch — it is a graphical, interface-based environment, with the “programming” created in a flow-chart design for your data and logic “streams”. Since you have control over the media, the logic, and the interface objects, you quite literally can build just about any kind of application without knowing a line of traditional code. Particularly good at real-time interaction, tinkering of any parameter you want, and being able to record or generate activity, Max is a must-try for anyone with any interest in these wide areas of art, music, data, and math. If that isn’t enough, it also provides integrated support for Java, Javascript, and C, so that those things better done by text-based code can be used too — right in the midst of your interface.

The much-anticipated release of Max 5 — called by the company as “Max for the next 20 Years” — is slated for April 2008!

http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp

Anyone know of any data visualization tools that will generate printable (press quality) results?

Hey have you heard the hottest reggae singer Ava Leigh’s new single called mad about the boy? .It’s available on I Tunes and at HMV.

Thank you very much. Perfect.

VERY nice compilations

http://www.julienbayle.net/complexity

reading above about the ‘Lone Ranger’- you should see the scathing article about his book! It’s an interesting read…you can view it at: http://www.fyivisual.com
titled: Information Dashboard Design- The Emperor Has No Clothes

Enjoy!

I agree with BK, lots lovely beautiful ways to present data, but users of data need it to have more structure to it, to be able to report on their findings for different audiences – there is a showcase of examples on a site called instantatlas. I think there is a lot of practicle examples there of data represented geographically

Very interesting ;)

These are certainly attractive, and can be useful in comprehending large chunks of data in a meaningful way.

But of course there’s a double edge (or maybe several double edges). The value of any chart is constrained not just by the accuracy of the data, but the validity of the data, and even the simplest chart can mislead. When a chart is visually compelling, the capacity to mislead might be exponential.

So while I think these charts are lovely, I’d like to see function win out over form, and I’d like to see much more attention to the critical thinking that produces the most useful data.

The greater capacity for error or misinterpretation, the greater need for the higher development of critical thinking skills which underpin the data selection on which the charts are based.

These things over-ride every other consideration bar (no pun intended) purely artistic ones.

Great article. The most innovative use of heatmap I have seen: http://www.scoregrid.com . These guys create heatmaps from the data derived during a soccer game.

Does anyone have suggestions for neat ways to represent family history / genealogical data?

Family Tree Maker is the most popular tool on the market. However, its built in tools for presenting a family tree are really low-budget. It is also very difficult to customize the family tree in a “high-design” way. Large data sets result in absolutely huge diagrams (30, 60, + pages of printed material).

The standard genealogical format is GEDCOM. I’ve been trying to create a contact list of living cousins, that also shows how we are connected via a single ancestor. I want the list to be printable on a single page. This is impossible to do on FTM, and I don’t want to type all the data again into a design tool like Adobe Illustrator. I’ll look at the tools here, but I’m guessing none of them support GEDCOM.

In addition, I’d be interested in how to best present this type of information online. The Elastic Lists thing looks promising.

hey,,,great

Awesome visuals! A lot of great sites I hadn’t heard of. To respond to a comment above, to make your own graph or map type visualizations you can use the (free) software http://www.sacmeq.org/statplanet/
its quite straightforward but you cannot use it to program your own visualizations. For that you could use something like Graphviz http://www.graphviz.org

holy ballz, i can lern so moch frum deez

also, if you’re free thursdays, come to McHiggin’s Bar, and ill do ya right.

I for one would love to meet you Max Burr, and see your butt