The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Video by Jonathan Jarvis, makes sense of the credit crisis.  HD version is available at http://crisisofcredit.com/. 

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Taking Apart the $819B Stimulus Package

Very detailed infographic from the Washington Post showing how the proposed stimulus package is broken out between ares of spending and tax cuts.

The centerpiece of President Obama's domestic agenda is an $819 billion economic stimulus plan. The Senate will consider the measure this week, with an eye toward the amount of tax cuts and spending. Republicans and Democrats spar over what to consider a tax cut. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tallies the tax-cut portion to be significantly less than the one-third Democrats claim it to be.

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office | Reporting by Karen Yourish, graphic by Laura Stanton - The Washington Post - February 01, 2009

Space Debris video

Sticking with the Space Debris theme, the ESA (European Space Agency) has this hi-res video on their website showing how crowded Earth orbit has become from 1968-2000.  Same issue as the image yesterday, that the objects are not to scale.  At this scale you would expect constant collisions, but at actual scale you wouldn't be able to see any objects at all.

In this animation, catalogued space debris are shown accumulating around Earth in 4-year increments, including payloads, rocket bodies, and fragments. While the debris objects are not shown to scale, the representation of their density is accurate.

Space Debris image

Great image from MSNBC PhotoBlog that tries to demonstrate how much space junk we have put into orbit around Earth.  I think the downside of this image is that the satellites aren't to scale.  If they were all this large, they would be running into each other all the time.

If you have Windows, you can see this high-res version with Microsoft HDView, but it doesn't work on a Mac.  I was able to see it with Parallels running on my MacBook.

A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. A communications satellite belonging to US company Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite on February 12, 2009.  (ESA via AFP - Getty Images/)

Thanks Karen for sending in the link!

Google Data Visualization Concepts

Check out GridPlane.com.  JD Hooge has posted images of some data visualization concepts he worked on with Google to look at aggregating social media topics.

I collaborated with Instrument to develop a series of data visualization concepts for Google. These interface sketches are are all based around a concept of aggregating and visualizing online media buzz across various social media outlets.

Thanks Edial for sending in the link!

Mapped Up - Visual News ScreenSaver

From lifehacker.com, MappedUp is a visual RSS Reader/ScreenSaver that displays the location of news stories on a pixel map of the world.  MappedUp is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X.

The Browser Wars Infographic

Great timeline infographic depicting the rise and fall of different browsers portrayed as knights marching across a field.  The data set used is available here.

It took me a while to find any information about the author, but I found this description on the Wired.com blog.

Here's a creative look at the history of the browser wars from 2002 through mid-2008. The infographic was submitted to Reddit by a user named BovingdonBug. He says he created it as part of an application for a graphic design job on a newspaper.

 Thanks Alwyn for the link!

"The Graph" - The Future of Solar Power

Known as "The Graph" in scientific circles, this chart projects the future of solar power.  It was highlighted in a Fast Company article in December 2008.

The Graph was created by a scientific organization that counsels the German government, but it has since become a prized piece of propaganda, embedded in glossy brochures and PowerPoint presentations by solar companies from California to gray-skied Saxony. At the left-hand, present-tense end of the scale, solar power is a microscopic pencil line of gold against the thick, dark bands of oil and natural gas and coal, an accurate representation of the 0.04% of the world's electricity produced by solar power as of 2006. The band grows slowly thicker for 20 years or so, and then around 2040 a dramatic inversion occurs. The mountain-peak lines indicating the various fossil fuels all fall steeply away, leaving a widening maw of golden light as solar power expands to fill the space. By 2060, solar power is the largest single band, and by 2100 it is by far the majority share.

ARRRRR! Where are the Pirates?!?

I had to post this one.  TorrentFreak.com revealed that The Pirate Bay has quietly released a Google powered map site that shows the locations of the bit-torrent clients.  Of course they carefully maintain the anonymity of their users.

You can click on the icon over a particular country to see their statistics.  From everything I hear, I would have thought the U.S. to have more pirates...ARRRRR!

Thanks Alwyn!

One Month of Spam

From TimGraham.net, Tim plotted out some statistics about all of the spam email he received in February 2008. 

Tim, only 208.5 spam emails a day?  You need to get your email address out into more public places!

Thanks for the link Alwyn!

Mapping the Growth of Target

Nathan Yau over on FlowingData.com has done a great job creating an animated map showing the growth of Target stores across the U.S.

Well, fortune was smiling on me last week, and I got a hold of data for Target opening dates and locations (thnx, Cole). So here it is - a map that shows the growth of Target from 1962 through 2008.

Nathan has promised to combine the data from this map with his previous work mapping The Growth of WalMart, into one map where you can see the differences.  So we'll keep our eyes out for that.