Recently in Visualization Category

I discovered a really neat animated visualization today called Breathing Earth.

It takes population data, births and deaths, as well as CO2 production for each country. In an animation, it shows a map of the world with the births, deaths and CO2 production for each country. There is a running total for how many people have been born or died since you started watching the site. You can also roll-over a country to get information about it.

It's beautifully hypnotic. I love the way the colors change and the little suns appear and disappear over different countries. It's also sobering to see how big the numbers get so quickly.

--- Originally posted on the Adaptive Path Blog ---

Like most folks in the office, I've joined the Twitter bandwagon. I find it's an easy way to keep in touch with folks I don't see on a regular basis. And learn new things about those a I do see.

Just now I checked out Twist, a site that lets you chart how much folks are twittering about a topic and plots them against each other, over time. It's a neat way to see how topics ebb and flow. I thought it would be neat to see how much the five senses are talked about on Twitter.

I think it's fascinating that folks Twitter the most about things they see so much more than any other sense. I would have thought that smell would have ranked higher. I wonder if it's because we are used to sharing things we saw with our cell phone cameras. Or if it's just part of human storytelling. "You'll never believe what I saw on the way home today..."