World Map for Power Plug Types

When traveling abroad, it is best to be prepared. However, does your check list include power plugs? The World Map for Power Plug Type infographic from Easy Smart, maps out the location and types of each plug throughout the world. Never go on vacation unprepared again!

Helpful, information visualizations are fantastic topics for infographics. Not a fan of the color scheme. Just a thought, but this would be even better if it was printed on small cards for travelers to carry!

Found on Life Hacker

50 Years of Visionary Sci-Fi Computer Interfaces

The 50 Years of Visionary Sci-Fi Computer Interfaces infographics from Glow New Media does a great job of visually showing you how sci-fi movies and tv shows predict we will interact with computers.

Science fiction imagines the future. This amazing infographic brings together 50 years of SciFi in movies and shows us how our imagination leads us into the future of computer interface design. Enjoy!

This infographic isn’t visualizing any data, it’s just showing the visual shots of how we might interface with computers.  So have already happened, like mobile devices from Quantum Leap, and others are still very speculative, like Tron’s Human Computer Convergence.

Thanks to David for sending in the link!

Social Network Overload

How often have you checked your social media accounts today? Feeling unplugged is a problem for many people.  Social Network Overload from mylife.com talks about how people are addicted to social media, and what they rather do than give up their Internet lifeline. 

Afraid you’re missing something important on your email, Facebook, Twitter, or other accounts? You are not alone. Two out of three people feel the same way. In the same survey, three out of five people wished there was a solution to monitor their various communication options.

Here’s an interesting infographic based on a survey by Harris which illustrates a growing trend—social media overload

The isometric illustrations of people and the data visualizations are fun, and the light-hearted data makes this one appealing to share.  The design is missing the URL to the infographic landing page, so that readers can find the original when they see thie infographic posted on other sites.

Found on The Undercover Recruiter and Visual Loop.

460 Million Connected Internet Devices

Beautiful data visualizations of some very scary data!  

An anonymous hacker under the pseudonym of “Carna Botnet” has posted a comprehensive Internet Census 2012 report of over 460 million internet connected devices that responded to PING requests or were found to have open ports.  He was able to create a botnet using over 30,000 Internet devices that had remote administration available using the Telenet and still had the factory installed standard passwords.  He found several hundred thousand open devices, but didn’t need that many.

Abstract: While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet. Many of them are based on Linux and allow login to standard BusyBox with empty or default credentials. We used these devices to build a distributed port scanner to scan all IPv4 addresses. These scans include service probes for the most common ports, ICMP ping, reverse DNS and SYN scans. We analyzed some of the data to get an estimation of the IP address usage. 

All data gathered during our research is released into the public domain for further study. 

The visualizations he was able to create using the gathered data are fantastic.  Check out the IMAGES page of the report for beautiful, high-resolution images.

The map visualization above shows the geolocation data of all 460 million devices that responded to the queries from the botnet, clustered around population centers as you might expect.  The animated GIF below shows the geolocated devices that responded during the course of a day, showing that many devices are turned off overnight but many more are just left on constantly.

My favorite visualization from the data is the Hilbert Map, which uses the a 2-dimensional Hilbert Curve to map out the continuous sequence of IP4 addresses into a square area, and then color-codes the address blocks that responded to a PING request.  There’s even a cool zoomable viewer of the Hilbert Map that lets you drill into the details.

This form of mapping was inspired by the xkcd Map of the Internet, which shows the Internet addresses that were distributed to major corporations in the 1990s before the Regional Internet Registries took over the allocation.

Found on the Security Now podcast #396 and FlowingData

What Makes a Travel Writer?

For those who would love to travel and write, the What Makes a Travel Writer? infographic from hotelclub.com is the infographic for you. This infographic covers the ages and careers of these writers, and also what technology they use.

If you’ve ever wanted to become a travel writer, you’ve probably wondered about the tools and resources the pros use to make their jobs possible. The trade secrets of those who successfully turn international adventures into paychecks are an enticing mystery. Does the key lie in social networking? Is it finding the right technology that makes all the difference? Or have these professionals stumbled onto some obscure websites that the rest of us are ignorant about?

Unfortunately, there isn’t one explicit answer that will transform you into a travel writer overnight. It is a combination of all of these things that enable the professionals to do their jobs well enough to afford a warm meal and their next plane ticket.

So to gain some insight into the tricks of the trade, and hopefully get you one step closer to your dream job, we surveyed some of the best travel writers on the web about their working habits. We got the scoop on Twitter from three of the most ‘Followed’ travel tweeters in the business (@Paul_Steele, @TravelEditor, and @DaveDTC); found out that Paris and NYC are two of the best places in the world to find (marketable) inspiration; and were warned against going any where near Birmingham or Malaga.

Find out what else we learned in our detailed infographic.

I really like this design.  I like that the infographic keeps the same, simple color scheme throughout to match the colors in the header. However, it lacks a border or a background color to help frame the infographic on a webpage with a white background.  The white background creates uncertainty of where it actually ends.

Most of the information is in percentages; however, it is all conveyed in different visual formats.  The stacked bars, pie charts and doughnut graphs correctly show them in comparison to the complete 100%.  The partially shaded shaped of film canisters, people icons and the world map aren’t quite correct.  The readers see the area colored of an object, and because of the odd shapes the designer had to guess the correct shading by just changing the height.  It’s close, but not actually correct.

A few other suggestions I would make:

• The two age groups compared with the man & woman icons aren’t related to each other, so the comparison isn’t helpful information.
• For the Male-Female comparison comparison in Travel Career, the icons need to be the same width for them the be accurate.  Visually it looks like 75% is at least double 53%, which obviously isn’t true.
• The Tablet Brands statistics of “100% of male travelers use Amazon Kindle” isn’t support by the data to the left, and is a highly unbelievable stat.  
• When lining up rows of icons, like in Blogging Platforms, the design should always use rows of 10 icons.
• I’m sure the last circle in the Twitter Usage section was supposed to be <100 Twitter followers instead of >100.
• There should be a URL at the end of the infographic linking to the original full-size version.

Thanks to Ally for sending in the link!

The Lifespan of Storage Media

Crashplan has just released The Lifespan of Storage Media, a comprehensive guide to how long your data will last.  Designed by Mike Wirth with InfoNewt, this infographic compares the expected lifespans of popular media types used over the last 100 years to save different kinds of information: computer data, photos, videos and audio.  Do your 8-tracks still play?

As each new form of data storage comes on the scene, the market is at first enamored with its compactness, convenience and hoped-for data longevity. But invariably, the reality of physical vulnerability and a limited lifespan remains. Eventually, all media fails, but Cloud backup is forever.

This was a fantastic project to work on, and the data research was the most challenging piece.  We had to find data to support both an average expected life and an extended “with extreme care” life.  We certainly found some contradictory data sources, and ultimately used data we felt was the most commonly accepted in the industry.

Do you have old computer backups burned to CDs, tapes or even hard drives on your shelf?  Don’t count on being able to read the data from them too much longer!  The short lifespan for many of these types of media that people use everyday to archive their personal photos and videos was most surprising.

Thanks to the team at Crashplan for a great project!

The Greatest Human and Digital Viruses of All Time

 

Viruses. We all hate them. If they aren’t slowings us down physically, they are slowing down our computers. See the best of the worst on uniblue’s The Greatest Viruses of All Time infographic from Uniblue’s free resource libraries site liutilities.com.

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” ― Dalai Lama XIV

Viruses are inevitably small in nature, yet engineered to unleash intense and often terrifying devastation. They leave a costly aftermath whether it’s the irreparable loss of human life, or millions (sometimes billions) of dollars in lost revenue and property.

We have gone through history to find the worst viruses of them all; little creatures and scripts that have taken advantage of social and economic situations to propagate and amplify their prowess in mayhem and destruction.

Join us in this brief journey through time, spanning back as early as 1348 where we shall meet the darkest and most wicked viruses to ever afflict mankind.

This is a really elegant design that does a fantastic job of telling a story and walking the reader through the information.

Mostly text and illustrations, there aren’t many numerical data point to visualize.  The few numbers there are to work with, could have been visualized better to give them context and help the readers understand them better.  Why are 21 human icons shown to represent “75,000,000 to 200,000,000 dead” from the Black Death plague?

At the bottom should be some type of copyright (or Creative Commons) statement, and the URL for readers to find the original infographic landing page.

Designed by Derek Fenech, thanks for sending in the link!

Defense of the Ancients (DotA) Infographic

The Defense of the Ancients (DotA) infographic from GameArena.com takes game enthusiasts through a brief history of how the game came about!

Dota, Defence of the Ancients, is the latest hype in gaming. Initially developed as a modified game in Starcraft, the concept has now grown globally and has even made its way into professional competitions. Popular game titles that have implemented the “DotA” concept include Warcraft 3, DotA Allstars, DemiGod, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth and Realm of the Titans. Two more upcoming titles that will certainly get the gaming world’s attention are DotA 2 and Blizzard DotA.

So what is DotA exactly? Our trusty graphics boffins have once again created the infographic below for the complete history on how the new genre came about.

The design style is certainly relevant to the game look-and-feel itself.  The timeline is odd that some events don’t have specific dates identified.  The use if icon illustrations for different concepts and company/game logos on the timeline helps the reader.  I would have liked to see some of the stats behind the game and its popularity.

Thanks to Eric for sending in the link!

The Changing Role of the CIO

The Changing Role of the CIO infographic from Wikibon explores the varying roles of the CIO. The prominence of the CIO position has risen greatly as information technology has become an increasingly important aspect of the modern organization.  The amount of information that companies ahve to deal with and make sense of is only going to continue to increase.

CIOs today have a top operational and strategic priority (not technology priority) to support the mission of the business through the application of technology. While they are under pressure to reduce costs, CIOs must deliver agility and efficiency to the organization. The CIO is also VERY concerned about risk. CIOs don’t want to disrupt what’s working while chasing new opportunities.

Think of the CIO as managing a portfolio of applications, technologies, people and processes. The technology portfolio is allocated to initiatives that are designed to 1) Run the business 2) Grow the business and 3) Transform the business. Like a good portfolio manager, the CIO must balance risk and reward by allocating resources in a balanced manner. The degree of risk is a function of the objectives of the board of directors and the strategic plan and operating plans of the companies.

I really like the topic, and the information covered in this design.  However, there isn’t a clear path for the reader to follow the information story down the design.  It’s crowded, and has different data scattered throughout the design.

Four things are missing from the bottom of the design: a copyright statement, the URL where readers can find the original infographic landing page, credit to the designer(s) and SOURCES.  Where did the data come from?  Why should we believe it?

Thanks to Jay for sending in the link!

Geek vs. Nerd: Which Are You?

The Geeks vs. Nerds head-to-head smack-down comes to us from MastersInIT.org. 

In the ongoing battle between geek and nerd, one must take sides, but how can this be done without a solid argument for both personas? We here at Masters In IT (a mix of nerds and geeks) decided that it’s time to lay all the cards on the table to determine which is better and answer the question some fear to know: Are you a geek, or a nerd?

A little text-heavy and lighter fare than I normally post, but this one is just fun to read through.  There are a handful of stats included, and the doughnut charts and bar charts are easy to understand.

Like many of the infographics I’ve posted lately, it’s missing a URL at the bottom for readers to find the original post, a copyright statement and listing the designer!

Thanks to Gerri for sending in the link!  Also found on Infographic Journal, Daily Infographic.