Send your own Augmented Reality Christmas Cards!

Merry Christmas from Cool Infographics!

What better way to share your Christmas wishes than with augmented reality?!?  You can send your own AR Christmas cards courtesy of arwishes.com.  You can choose from an assortment of animated images that will appear on screen when you friends and family hold up your Christmas card in front of their computer's webcam.

The cards are printed with the marker, disguised as a holiday image.  In this case, the marker is obviously the Christmas Tree.

A number of companies did this last year, sending out cards with an AR marker printed as part of the card, and a number of them are still online.  You can also print out a card from the sites to see the image yourself.  There will probably be a few more this holiday season as well, but here are some videos from last year's AR cards and links to sites if you want to experience them yourself.

Specialmoves.com:

Special Moves Augmented Reality Xmas Card from Iain Tait on Vimeo.


TellArt:


Tellart 2008 Holiday Card from Tellart on Vimeo.


Stella Artois:



Total Immersion:




There's even a video of sending your own AR Christmas Cookies!

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.

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.

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

Eye Tracking Infographic Plots

Eye tracking is used is a number of different fields of study; consumer interaction design, advertisements, product packaging, website/software usability, store shelf merchandising design and many more.  The results are plotted visually as an infographic, because it instantly makes the data understandable to the researchers.

In the fixation map image above, a participant's focal points on a website are tracked and the points are numbered in sequential order (like connect-the-dots).  The dots are also each sized based on "Gaze Duration", the amount of time the participant spent looking at that particular point.  In the example above, it took the participant 90 fixations to find the information they were looking for...not a good site design.

Of course, you can narrow down the fixation points and only see the first few points that attracted the participant's attention.  Answering the question "What does the user see first?"  In this example, the participant looking at the flight website saw the hotel ad first.

It's not just for websites.  When you use this method for product packaging, you can tell what the consumer sees in the store during the first few seconds, and the popular understanding is that you only have 3 seconds of the consumer's attention in the store.  The use of the infographic fixation map instantly conveys to the packaging designers what the consumer sees, and what parts of the design are ignored.

The fixation maps are converted into heat maps to aggregate many participant results together.  You can see here that participants aren't seeing the "Diesel for Successful Living" message.

Thanks to Colin from IDG Consulting for providing the images!  I have used IDG for consumer research projects in the past, and I highly recommend them.

10/GUI - Re-imagining a Desktop Touch Interface

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

A little off-topic, but I love this video idea for a new touch interface to replace the mouse from 10/GUI. Designed by R. Clayton Miller.

This video examines the benefits and limitations inherent in current mouse-based and window-oriented interfaces, the problems facing other potential solutions, and visualizes my proposal for a completely new way of interacting with desktop computers. 

Thanks for the link Tyler!  Found on Ignore The Code.

Check Out Your Own Online DNA - Visually

Check out Personas, an interactive, online DNA visualizer.  You enter your own name (or anyone's name for that matter) and watch the system as it categorizes you from online searches.  I've displayed my own DNA above.  The types of attributes it associates with your name are based on the text it finds in the search results.

As you watch Personas analyze the search results you can see that in my case, it doesn't differentiate between me and the other Randy Krums of the world, so our attributes are blended together into one common DNA.

Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.  Upon entering a name, it scours the Internet looking for characterizing statements to use in its analysis.  After suitable information has been found, the viewer watches as the machine tries to make sense of the displayed text.  Once it has reached its final conclusions, the resulting "Personas vector" is displayed and annotated with a minimal legend.

Personas is just one part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, now currently on display at the MIT Museum through September 2009 (it needs a new home!).  Metropath(ologies) is a participatory installation about living in a world overflowing with information and non-stop communication, a world in which you are simultaneously the audience and the subject.  It is deliberately ambiguous about the desirability of this communication abundance, riding the line between serene and sinister.

Found on VisualThinkMap.

HealthMap: The Global Disease Alert Map

HealthMap.org is an online map tool that locates any reports of disease from a selection of news sources.  Available in multiple languages, HealthMap is a great use of the Google Maps API.  In fact, HealthMap is funded by Google, which explains why they are so dependent on the Google Maps data.

HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.

They also recently launched an iPhone app called Outbreaks Near Me, available for free in the iTunes app store.  The app allows you to view the maps from your iPhone and get alerts for outbreaks in your area.

Balance Your Media Diet (The Media Pyramid Infographic)

From Wired Magazine's "New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans" section of the August 2009 issue.

Practicing good nutrition keeps your mind sharp, your body fit, and your life long. The same could be said for consuming media. (Seriously, knowledge is power.) When you add it all up, the average American spends roughly nine hours a day glued to some kind of screen, and like your diet, quality is as important as quantity. Here areWired's suggested servings for optimal media health.

Found on Nathan's Flowingdata.com

New Hans Rosling video, using GapMinder (Must see!)

New TED Talk video of Hans Rosling talking to the U.S. State Department, "Let my dataset change your mindset".  Using the GapMinder software that was purchased by Google, Hans shows the third world isn't as far behind the U.S. as most people believe.

reMap: An Amazing Visual Browsing Interface to VisualCompexity.com

Bestario has created reMap, an interactive portal to view all of the infographics posted on VisualComplexity.com, and it's amazing.  They've created semantic connection between the different infographics using tags tat allow for an incredible browsing experience.

An interactive, visual browsing interface to an infographic archive.

reMap displays visualcomplexity.com projects allowing navigation using a semantic approach and depicting relations among them. All images and texts belong to vc portal. Tags are assigned using a semantic engine created by Bestiario.

Thanks Jose!  I love it!

NEW Death and Taxes 2010 poster!!

First, Jess from WallStats.com has released the 2010 Death & Taxes poster.  This is one of the best infographic examples today.  It's extremely informative, and the topic has a very wide reach.  The Death & Taxes poster from 2007 was my initial post on Cool Infographics, so I'm very excited to see this update.   Now the 2010 version is available to purchase as a poster here. Great job Jess!

Second, I'm really impressed by the viewer code for the poster. It's from Zoomorama.com, and lets me embed the interactive viewer.  The built-in zoom is pretty nice, but the Quick Find index on the left side is the best part.

The Conversation Prism 2.0 has been released!

Check out the new version of The Conversation Prism 2.0 by JESS3 and Brian Solis and theconversationprism.com.  Available as a poster for $20 US on thier website, and they also have some high-resolution versions available.

I love the design of this one.  It's seems to be essentially a mind map, but much easier to read and understand.

This is an update to the original Conversation Prism that you can see here on Flickr.

Thanks Dana!  I found the link to the 1.0 version on ON:Digital+Marketing

You Need to Get Seadragon!

If you haven't checked it out yet, you need to take a look at Seadragon.  I know its from Microsoft, but I like it anyway!  Seadragon is a software project to allow users to browse and zoom into high-resolution images.  I'm especially attached to the iPhone version of Seadragon Mobile (link opens iTunes) available for free from iTunes!

One of the best things about the iPhone version is that it includes some example images, and includes some of the work from Chris Jordan.  Longtime readers of the blog know I really like Chris Jordan's series "Running the Numbers" which uses high-resolution images to visually show the viewer statistical information about how we live.

What is Wolfram|Alpha?

I'm not sure I understand what Wolfram|Alpha is yet, but so far it's pretty impressive.  Developed by Stephen Wolfram and his team, it claims to be a "computational knowledge engine".  The input box looks like a search engine, but it is definitely NOT a search engine.

When you type in a question, it attempts to show you all of the relevant data it can find.  It is actually calculating and charting this information real-time in order to present it to you.  Because its built on top of the Mathematica Engine, it can also handle math problems.

I think this will be an important tool for many designers of infographics, because you can get some of your raw data directly from Wolfram|Alpha.  As they add more data into the system over time, this will become one of your best resources for information.  They have a pretty extensive page of examples by category that is a great place to start.  Also watch the short video by Stephen Wolfram showing what the system can do.

Quub.com Infographic Demo Video

Introduction to quub from quub.com on Vimeo.

Quub.com is an interesting service that facilitates updating your status often to create "ambient communication".  This is a form of micro-presence, that helps you keep your status up to date, which keeps it relevant to your followers.  Quub.com created three infographic videos to help explain their service.

Currently the service in in Beta, but there are still many slots available if you want to join the Beta program.  You can use their service with many different social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIN, MySpace, Hi5, Tumblr, Plurk, etc.

Even though the ambient model has established itself as a popular form of communication, it requires you to continuously update your status in order to work effectively. This is a problem. Coming up with new status updates requires time, effort and creativity. Additionally, you are forced to consider a number of complex factors before updating. Is your update appropriate? What should you type in? Who is your audience? Does anyone care? Is your message even relevant?  Because of this, many people neglect to update their status and it's value decreases. Without consistent updates, the ambient model falters.

Found the link Information Aesthetics and on Twitter!

Effing Hail, The isometric infographic game!

"Effing Hail" is a cool web game you play in your browser from Intuition Games!  The isometric animation is very reminiscent of the Royskopp video for "Remind Me".  You control the wind to hold the hail in the air so it continues to grow in size before releasing it to crush the objects below.

Found on Information Aesthetics and a bunch of Tweets on Twitter!

Can design save the newspaper? (Jacek Utko)

Short TED Talk by Jacek Utko that explores how design can not only improve newspapers, but also your product or brand.

Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might.

Build Your Own Infographic World Map

Why is another world popoulation map website Cool?  Because on GunnMap, by Gunn Interactive, you can load your own data.   There are a few example data sets preloaded like population, GDP growth, military spending and birth rate, but the best part is that you can paste in your own data to create a custom world map.

Here's a quick demo video from Arthur Gunn on how to use the site by pasting in data from the CIA website to create a new map:


GunnMap demo from Arthur Gunn on Vimeo.

Thanks Paul for the link!

Microsoft's Vision 2019

Apparently by 2019, we will all live in an infographic world, and that's good news for us.  Microsoft had the first public showing of the video at the Wharton Business Technology Conference.  Some found Microsoft's video inspiring, and some were not impressed.

I love some of the ideas shown in the video, but much of it also felt like the magic of Hollywood.  Because this blog is focused on infographics, I understand how much thought and effort from the designer goes into making just one infographic image useful and easy to understand.