Black Friday Deal! 3-for-1 posters at Flowing Prints

Nathan over at FlowingData and FlowingPrints is offering a special 3 posters for the price of 1 deal for Black Friday (offer good through Sunday 11/29).  That's all three posters for $20!

For readers of Cool Infographics to take advantage of the deal, go to FlowingPrints, click on the "Buy The Series" button and use the promotion code: bfridayfps20

The three posters all focus on Education, titled "College High", "Education: Enrollment and Dropouts" and "How America Learns: by the Numbers".  If not for yourself, think about buying a set for your local school or library!

The state of education in America is the theme of this series. With funds getting cut nationwide, it's important to know how today's youth are learning (or not learning).  We looked at over three decades of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Education has seen a lot of improvement over the years, but there is still plenty of room for growth.

Also, for every print you buy, Nathan will send an additional one to a local school too!  Thanks Nathan!

Cool Infographics on the Amazon Kindle!

The Cool Infographics RSS feed is now available as a subscription for the Amazon Kindle!

It downloads the new blog posts wirelessly through the Amazon Whispernet network so you can view them anytime, even when you're not connected to the network.  It looks pretty good for being in black & white.  You do get to see the images I post on the blog, but you have to come back and view them on your computer to get the full color images.

Kindle Blogs are auto-delivered wirelessly to the Kindle and updated throughout the day. They are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you're not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle contain full text content and most images.

I  just figured out that this was even possible.  Amazon sets their own price, which they have set at $1.99 per month for some unknown reason.  I do get a very small piece of that, so subscribing does support the Cool Infographics blog.

To give credit, I saw the link on Matthew Hurst's Data Mining blog.

Florence Nightingale: Causes of Mortality infographic from 1858!

Yes, from that Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), and it's from 1858!  The polar area diagram is also known as the Nightingale Rose Graph.

From Wikipedia,

This "Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" was published in Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army and sent to Queen Victoria in 1858.


This graphic indicates the number of deaths that occured from preventable diseases (in blue), those that were the results of wounds (in red), and those due to other causes (in black). 

The legend reads: 

The Areas of the blue, red, & black wedges are each measured from the centre as the common vertex. The blue wedges measured from the centre of the circle represent area for area the deaths from Preventable or Mitigable Zymotic diseases, the red wedges measured from the centre the deaths from wounds, & the black wedges measured from the centre the deaths from all other causes. The black line across the red triangle in Nov. 1854 marks the boundary of the deaths from all other causes during the month. In October 1854, & April 1855, the black area coincides with the red, in January & February 1855,(*) the blue coincides with the black. The entire areas may be compared by following the blue, the red, & the black lines enclosing them.

Also from Wikipedia:

Florence Nightingale had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father. Later, Nightingale became a pioneer in the visual presentation of information and statistical graphics. Among other things she used the pie chart, which had first been developed by William Playfair in 1801.

Florence Nightingale is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term has frequently been used for the individual diagrams. She made extensive use of coxcombs to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to Members of Parliament and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports.

In her later life Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India.

In 1859 Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Found this while reading the great FlowingData post "9 Ways to Visualize Proportions – A Guide" by Nathan Yau.

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Probes in the Universe - cool interactive infographic

Space Probes is a very well-done interactive graphic about all of the space probes we have launched, visually placing the probes in orbit around the object they are observing.  You can move around the 3-D space with the keyboard controls, change the date range with the sliders on the bottom or go directly to a particular probe from the list on the right that is group by planet or object they are around.  When you mouse-over a particular probe you get more details and an image.

The article and the infographic are in Portuguese from Brazil, so I took the liberty of using the Google Translator for a little help.

The infographic "Space Probes" Super, produced by the team of Internet Editora Abril Jovem, took the silver medal in the category Online Malofiej, top prize in the world of computer graphics.

Thanks to Daniel for the link and a little more information:

It won Malofiej's silver medal (first place, no gold medal) this year. 

It's an infographic about all space probes launched until the date it was published (except Earth probes, which are too many). The info has information about each probe, including the organization(s) that sent it, the target planet(s) (or moons, asteroids, comets and the sun), launch date and mission details, as well as pictures for most of them. User can navigate through our Solar System using the mouse and/or keyboard. It's also possible to know the details of Mars Science Laboratory, the next NASA probe to visit the red planet. The info is in Portuguese, but anyone can understand it's features and learn a little bit about space exploration so far.

Cool Infographics 2.0 BETA

Exciting things are happening around here!  Watch closely in the next couple of weeks for a bunch of changes to Cool Infographics!  I'll also post about the changes as they happen on Twitter.

Step 1: Cool Infographics now has a new URL address:  www.coolinfographics.com

Please change your bookmarks to the new address.  The old URL address, coolinfographics.blogspot.com, will keep working for a few weeks, but eventually will go away.

If you use an RSS reader, nothing changes.  The RSS feed doesn't change so you don't have to do anything.

Step 2: Watch for the design changes in the next few weeks (like the new logo above!).  I've got some big plans for Cool Infographics.

Sounds easy with only two steps doesn't it?  That's because I get to do all of the work.

Thanks to everyone for reading and subscribing!

Motionbox PRO discount & Roku Box Giveaway

Motionbox is an online service to share video content that allows you more control over who can view your content.  They are also a video hosting service that allows you to embed video on your own site with a clean, "white label" player without any watermarks, ads or branding from the video site (like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

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NOVEMBER GIVEAWAY: Anyone who signs up for a free account in the month of November (one week left!) can enter into the giveaway of 3 Roku HD players.  If you're not familiar, the Roku Box connects to your TV and allows you to stream video from the Internet to you TV, including HD content.  Official Rules are here.

All you have to do is sign up for a FREE Motionbox account before November 30, 2009 then email offers@motionbox.com with subject line "Roku Giveaway" and we'll enter your name for a chance to win a Roku HD  Player. 

Also, for any readers interested in signing up for the PRO account, the $50 setup fee will be refunded.  Once you’ve set up your account, send an email to offers@motionbox.com with offer code PROblogger2009 and they will set up your refund.

A special gift for you and your readers: From now until the end of the year, sign up for a Motionbox PRO account, and we’ll refund your $49.99 set up fee! 

Motionbox PRO provides small businesses, pro bloggers, and commercial content producers with a comprehensive video hosting solution. PRO service includes archival storage, web-based editing, streaming and embedding, all in superior quality, up to 1080p HD.

Thanks to Lowell for setting this up for readers of Cool Infographics!

Visual Map of 30 Free Online Promotion Websites

Great visual map of the connections between free online sites to promote your content.  Made by Chris Watson at Visualization Magazine.

This visualisation was made to help inform and advertise on how easily and effectively you can use the web 2.0 tools to build an online presence through free sites, feeds, embed and monitor progress/stats.

Chris also has links to all of these icons in his post in case you want to create your own Web 2.0 visual.

Webpages As Graphs - Cool HTML visualizer applet

Marcel Salathe has created Webpages As Graphs, an interactive HTML DOM visualizer applet that will view any http:// website in a graphic form.  The image above is Cool Infographics, but the arrangement comes out a little different every time you run it.

Using Processing, Traer Physics and HTMLParser the site lets you enter the domain and then watch while it works its magic.  He has also made the source code available and instructions to print your graph as a poster.

HTML consists of so-called tags, like the A tag for links, IMG tag for images and so on. Since tags are nested in other tags, they are arranged in a hierarchical manner, and that hierarchy can be represented as a graph. I've written a little app that visualizes such a graph

I ran it for a number of other websites to see the differences, some were inspired by the examples on Marcel's site.

Amazon.com: Pretty complex site with lots of links, images and tables.

Apple.com: Simple design, as you expect from Apple.

Google.com:  Known for their clean front page.

LifeHacker.com:  Great blog with a very complex structure.

Found on VisualCompexity.com

The Ambient Life (an infographic video)

Freeband - The Ambient Life from The QBF on Vimeo.

An animated vision of the future commissioned by Freeband Communication, The Ambient Life is a look at how we might interact with infographics all around us in everyday life (although I hope the plane crash isn't an everyday occurrence!)

A world in which information and communication technology render one's surroundings into a thinking and caring environment. 

Design and direction by Martijn Hogenkamp, an Amsterdam based motion director and designer.

Found on DataVisualization.ch

The Timeline of Michael Jordan

Created by Khoi Nguyen as a class project, The Timeline of Michael Jordan lays out the key events of his spectacular career with iconic images representative of each time period.  A little design work work makes what could be a simple timeline into a great infographic that draws the reader in.

Check out Khoi's blog/portfolio.

Great work Khoi!

ANC Spending infographic

Diaan Minhardt created this simple infographic for his blog, Dreamfoundry, to show how money being spend on new cars for government officials could have been spent differently to build houses.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the rivers of money haemorrhaging out of the government coffers for idiotic reasons for some time now. What I saw inspired me to create this very simple infographic.

Thanks Diaan!

Verizon 3G Infographic Commercial Causes Lawsuit

Verizon's new "There's a Map for That" television commercial uses these floating maps to compare their coverage area for the high-speed 3G network to AT&T's 3G coverage area.

From what I can tell, the maps are in fact accurate in representing the 3G network coverage; however, AT&T has now sued Verizon because the ad misleads customers to believe that AT&T doesn't have coverage in the blank areas.  AT&T does have coverage in most of the blank areas, but it's the slower 2.5G/EDGE network.

Even if the graphics are completely accurate, infographics can definitely be used to lead the viewer to an incorrect conclusion that the author wants to communicate.

Found on Infothetics.

XKCD: Movie Narrative Charts

Great post by the XKCD online comic series!  They occasionally post a infographic-style piece, and this one doesn't disappoint.

Created by Randall Munroe at XKCD, the Movie Narrative Charts plot the interactions between key characters on a timeline, grouping the character lines together when they are interacting in the movies.  He obviously spent some time working on these, and be sure to check out the detail in the full size version.

The last two are jokes, but the ones for Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars Trilogy and Jurassic Park are real and very well done.  I love the Primer chart poke at trying to follow the movie!  Not as mainstream as the other movies, but it's definitely appropriate.  I'd love to see how Randall would chart Memento!

Thanks Tom for the email link!  Popular on the blogs, this was also found on Infothetics, FlowingData, SimpleComplexity, VizWorld and Fast Company.

Twitter List: Cool Infographics People

Introducing, the Cool Infographics People Twitter list! 

Last week, I got a nice surprise from Twitter.  My home page featured a new, sizable banner that announced the “beta” release of lists.  I'm lucky I went to the Twitter home page, because I usually use TweetDeck for Twitter and I wouldn't have seen it.

I started with everyone from my recent post "37 People You Should Follow for Infographics on Twitter" including all of the people that had been suggested after that post came out.  I added a bunch from the datavisualization.ch post "30 More People You Should Follow for Info Graphics on Twitter" by Ben.  Finally I found a handful of more infographics people just by using the new lists function to see who else is on other lists.

I knew lists were coming out in waves, slowly letting more and more people get access to the new feature, so I was on the lookout.  I think it's been rolled out to most Twitter users, but your account needs to be enabled with lists before you can see the lists from other people.  Once your account has been enabled, you will see a new statistic "Listed" on your Home page.

This shows you how many lists that other people have created that you've been included in.  Once you start following or creating lists, a new Lists section is added to your sidebar.  Here you can see the lists that you follow or manage yourself.

Please follow the Cool Infographics People list if you use Twitter, and obvously I will continue to add more infographic people to the list as I find them.  Also, please make any suggestions you think I am missing.