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!

The Carbon Economy - Infographic Video

New infographic video from Xplane.com.  The Carbon Economy takes a look at the political landscape around climate issues and new, green markets are emerging.

Created with The Economist, the video conveys the state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The piece was shown at The Economist's recent Carbon Economy Summit in November 2009.

Timed with the publication of a special report in The Economist, The Carbon Economy summit examines how the political environment has changed since Kyoto and how committed regions and industries are to a sustainable carbon strategy.

Bill Nye Videos on the Scale of the Solar System

Two videos from Bill Nye the Science Guy showing the size and scale of the planets and the Sun.  He may have done similar examples, but these are the two I know about.  The one above (Planets & Moon) starts at about 4:00 into the video, and the one below (Outer Space) starts at about 2:00.  "Outer Space is HUGE!"



Thanks to @DannyDougherty on Twitter for sharing!

Ebay Visualizes Black Friday 2009 - Interactive infographic map

From ebay, a map of the transaction activity on Black Friday 2009 (the shopping day after Thanksgiving).  1 million transaction are mapped in the U.S. over the course of the day!

Activity Level Indicator The color of the point on the map indicates the number of transactions that occurred in the corresponding area.

Data Execution This transaction map was created as a study of the extensive activity that occurs in the eBay Marketplace on the biggest offline shopping day of the year. It is a visualization of all U.S.-based buyer and seller transactions on eBay on Black Friday, November 27, 2009 (12:00:00 AM to 11:59:59 PM EST). Although eBay is an international marketplace, this map is focused on U.S. data, as Black Friday is the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season for the U.S.

It's an interactive, animated timeline, so you can watch the transactions grow throughout the day and zoom in to specific areas of the country by clicking on the map.  It's a flash animation, but there's a WMV movie file available for download too.

They also did a map of the even bigger 1.4 million transactions on Cyber Monday 2009.

Found on VizWorld

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!

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

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.

Procrastination: The Infographic Video

Although I really like this video by Johnny Kelly at Design You Trust (Good-Okay-Brilliant-Great job Johnny!), I not convinced this is infographics.

What do you think?  Is this infographics or illustration?

Found on The MLxperience

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.

Chris Jordan's TEDTalk 2008 - Visualizing Our World [video]

I've posted some of Chris Jordan's images here before, but here is a video of him talking about his work at TED in February 2008.

Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics -- like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.

Chris Jordan runs the numbers on modern American life -- making large-format, long-zoom artwork from the most mindblowing data about our stuff.

Thanks to Ben Fry for posting this on his site.

Here's a glimpse of Chris Jordan's current project in-progress on the island of Midway Atoll (http://www.midwayjourney.com/).

"Meet The Elements" - infographic video for kids

Found on BoingBoing and Information Aesthetics, a infographic music video, "Meet The Elements", from They Might Be Giants from their new kids album titled "Here Comes Science". Video directed by Feel Good Anyway.

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.

Big Bang Briefly [video]

A new video on YouTube that visually tries to help explain the Big Bang and the creation of the universe.  Narrated by Dr. Janna Levin.  Maybe a little more on the visual illustration side than infographic, but still good.

"We made this video about the Big Bang because the theory is important and amazing, but often misunderstood.

This video was produced without any funding from any outside sources. It was put together with donated creative time from a group with a desire to further public cognition of science

Science has many amazing stories to tell, this is the first. The Big Bang Briefly."

 Found on VizWorld.com

Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth [infographic video]

One Trillion Dollars Visualized [infographic video]

New video based on the infographics from our friend, Jess Bachman, from WallStats.com!  Created by/for Mint.com.

Trillion is the new Billion!

Hellmann's - It's Time for Real [infographic video]

Hellmann’s - It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

Stay the Same (Infographic Music Video)

Laurie Thinot directed this infographic music video "Stay The Same" by Autokratz.  She just earned recognition at the 19th Annual New Directors Showcase at Cannes.

A warped kalidescope of music video animation from the album Down & Out in Paris & London.

Links to videos from all of the winners are here.

Imagine Leadership, great infographic video

Great work from our friends at XPLANE.com for the Harvard Business School! Thanks to both XPLAE and Harvard for making this video available to the public.

The inspiring and thought-provoking piece on global leadership was created in collaboration with Nitin Nohria, Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration, and Co-Chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School.

The video debuted earlier this month at Harvard Business School's "How Can Leadership Be Taught" symposium on June 9 and 10. We were honored to partner with Nitin to create a visually appealing, provocative piece that would inspire viewers to take action, get involved and be motivated to lead.

"Imagine Leadership" is six minutes long and available for viewing on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuuTlQ0FzEU. Inspired by the popular "Did You Know? 2.0" video that we created, the new piece has similar qualities in how it visually represents key factoids, people and critical information. However, unlike "Did You Know," this piece combines illustration with graphics and photography, allowing the most appropriate visual content to represent each subject.

Videos online from the See Conference #4

A couple months ago (April 18th), the See Conference #4 was held in Wiesbaden, Germany.  This one-day event had a great lineup of speakers:  Aaron Koblin (Google Creative Lab), Julian Oliver (software artist), Gijs Joosen (ONL), Eric Rodenbeck (Stamen Design) and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Roth (University of Bremen).  The event was organized by Scholz & Volkmer (www.s-v.de).

The best part is that videos of the entire day of speakers are now available online from the event website at www.see-conference.com.  Some of the videos are in German, but Eric Rodenbeck, Julian Oliver, Gijs Joosen and Aaron Koblin are speaking English for their presentations.

Thanks Chantal!

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!