Top 10 examples of Data Visualization

Jul 5, 2009 by Dan Taylor    11 Comments    Posted under: Technology

With the tremendous amount of data circulating the internet at any given moment, it’d be nice to see some graphic representations of what’s actually happening, instead of just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s.

Add to that the what would most certainly be a maddening exercise in trying to find related content to the mix, and data visualizations become all the more important.  These data visualizations below represent to me the most meaningful and useful tools available.  They cover everything from Digg activity to Network connectivity, to simply watching the world tweet the day away.

Music and Movies

Liveplasma is movie and music visualization app that allows you to see related musicians and movies you might enjoy based on your initial input.  Enter the name of your favorite band, film, artist, or director and Liveplasma will map corresponding links to other similar artists and represent their relevance by size.

Fidg’t uses both last.fm and flickr tags to allow you to visualize your network and their tagging activities.  A rather handy tool, as I noticed most people that photograph flowers also like classical music.  Perhaps this is just my network, but interesting to correlate the data.  You might be surprised at some of the trends you discover.

Digg, Twitter, and Flickr

Arc has been my screensaver for quite a while.  Not only does it track the latest stories on Digg, but also shows the relationships between users that are submitting and digging these articles.  Arc offers two different modes, one a blitzkrieg of (semi) real time output, and the other (my personal choice) is a bit slower, allowing you to actually read the story headlines.

Stack takes the functionality of Arc a bit further and shows stories with the most recent activity across the bottom of the screen.  New digs drop from the top of the screen and load on top of the most recent, and a real time graph visualizes the activity patterns.  As activity for one story or another increases, those decreasing in activity are brushed off the bottom of the screen.

TwittEarth is pure twitter joy.  This one uses geotagging of tweets to visualize a worldwide conversation.  Using a global map users are represented by cute often armless, pixar-like mosters, with their tweet visualized above their heads indicating user name and geographic location.  Maybe not the most productive of the visualization, but certainly one of the most fascinating to watch.

The Flickr Related Tag Browser is a might handy feature when either trying to narrow down a flickr search, or when simply flipping through the massive collection of images.  Using a chain-like sequence, by clicking on one related tag (those circling the original tag), users are presented with a Polaroid type image containing a selection of images that have been tagged with the search word.  A circle then surrounds the collection of images with associated tags.  If firehouse didn’t quite give you the image you were looking for, chances are Dalmatian is a related tag, and from there you might also explore sporting dogs to find that perfect Golden Retreiver image you were searching for.  On the flip side, expect a laugh or two when you realize others’ similar tagging preferences can lead you down a rather interesting path.

Teh Internetz

The Twingly Screensaver, which I use on my windows (only, sorry OSX peeps) machine pulls rss feeds and visualizes blog activity from around the world.  I always know when it’s 8am on the East Coast without even having to look at a clock.  Quite fun to watch America wake up and hit the ‘publish’ button.

The Web Trend Map 4 reminds me a bit of the Los Angeles subway map on a quiet day, and something akin to the Moscow subway system on a busy day.  While this is the fourth version of this tool, I only became away of it via twitter, where I regularly watch internet trends via twitscoop.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a screenshot last Thursday, but as you can imagine, all roads lead to Michael Jackson.

Others

The TED Sphere is one of the most enjoyable ways to navigate through the tremendous amounts of offerings from TED.  The 3D sphere allows for navigation from either outside or inside, and presents videos based on semantic relevance and compatibility.

The We Feel Fine tool provides a visual representation of the overall feelings of the the blogosphere at any given time.  Users can filter results based on age, location, sex, weather, and many others.  We Feel Fine isn’t just limited to one presentation either, but provides users with sex different options: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.  Each of these unique visualization provide a different portrait of real-time events.

After playing around with close to 50 online data visualizers, there were the 10 that struck me the most.  Naturally, I didn’t list them all, but something tells me there are probably even a few that I missed.  What’s important to you in data visualization?  What are some of your favorites?  Let me know in the comments below.

Snackr – renewing my faith in RSS

Nov 13, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology

Zoinks!  Look at all these unread articles that are simply piling up in my RSS feed reader.  How the heck am I going to read all of these?  You know…I wish there was just something that could make a minimal footprint and still give me all the tasty RSS feed that I love.  Meh…this sucks and I feel like I’m wasting my time with this overloaded RSS feed reader.  Minimize, never open again.

Does any of this sound even remotely familiar?  Well stop using my voice as your narrative.   But seriously, when I first became aware of what RSS was/is and how to use it, I’ll admit I went a bit overboard with the subscriptions.  After a while, it got to the point where I’d read 5 or 6 feeds a day, and watch the unread items notification pile up.  At one point I finally got fed up with my self-inflicted guilt, and just abandoned RSS altogether, and just went directly to the site to catch up.  The problem with this is distractions, bills to pay, random acts of WoW, etc.

Enter stage right (left, top or bottom if you prefer): Snackr.  Thanks to Ritchie over at Datenschmutz, my faith in RSS has been restored.  I stopped by his laboratory the other day and happened to notice this slick little news ticker running up the left side of his second monitor.  A closer inspection revealed that the news was actually coming from a variety of sites.  “You don’t know Snackr?” says Ritchie.  A short 20-minute subway ride home, and I’m all over Snackr.

Snackr is missing an e.  Yes, snackr is missing an e, but hey, flickr gets away with it, and I think this tiny little app might have the same appeal to me as the world’s best photo sharing site, as I believe Snackr to be the worlds best RSS feed reader.  The concept is simple enough: Snackr is an RSS ticker that pulls random articles from RSS feeds you select (i.e. news you want to read).  You can then select where you’d like the ticker to be displayed.  I personally have it running up the left side of my screen, as I slightly offset all windows to the right anyway, it made perfect sense.

I’ll admit that the system is not perfect, it’s a heckuva lot more intuitive than logging into a feed reader and sitting there idly and reading.  Instead of having to stay on top of the feeds 2-3-4 times a day, I’ve not got news scrolling along in the background.  Not to mention that I’ve now got any breaking news right in front of my eyes as it happens.   Once I see a title that grabs me, it’s a simple click to open the feed, and depending on the source, either read the whole article or just an excerpt.  Snackr always provides as link at the bottom of the window to the entire story, should you want to comment, blog about it, or view images.

The preferences panel couldn’t be easier to navigate, with options for scroll speed, keep snackr in front of other windows (something I don’t need as I set the ticker off to the left so that it’s always in view), don’t show items older than (insert number here) days old (I personally set it to 1 day, as I want the most recent news), automatically check for updates, and position of the ticker.

Adding an RSS feed to Snackr hasn’t been exactly easy, as my default RSS reader is set to AppleMail, and to be honest, I haven’t really figured out how to change it.  Instead, I normally copy/past the RSS feed address into Snackr.  Removal of a feed is just as easy.  In the preferences panel all your feeds are listed.  Simply click on the feed and then select Remove.  Presto.  Gone.

Another drawback is that Snackr won’t automatically remove a feed from the ticker that you’ve already viewed.  It will turn the text a slightly darker shade of grey, but I’d love to see the feed removed and replaced with another article from the feed.

I’ve been testing Snackr for the past week, and as the title states, Snackr has renewed my faith (and use of) RSS feeds.  I’ve found myself glancing over at it while programs load, emails download, or during flight times in WoW.  Truly an awesome utility that I recommend without question.

Bonus: Snackr allows import/export of RSS feeds in OPML format.  If you’re installing snackr, you can simply import my faves right on top of yours.  If there are a few you don’t like…feel free to delete away.

Related articles

• Full RSS Feed Versus Partial
• A Basic Instructional Guide to RSS Feeds
• RSS: An Introduction
• OPML Resources for ReadWriteWeb Readers
• GreatNews RSS Reader Takes Your Bloglines Subscriptions Offline
• DailyMe’s Basic Personalized Feed Reader