Apple's 1 Billion Apps live countdown

Apple is using a live countdown timer for is 1 Billion App Countdown promotion.  It's almost real-time, and is a step better than when they did the 1 Billion Song Download a few years ago.

At the rate its going, they'll reach a billion before the end of the week!

Download an app and you’ll automatically get the chance to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.

 Also, there a link to enter the contest without buying an App.  You can enter 25 times a day.

Planets, a Solar System Visualizer

Check out Planets, an interactive solar system visualizer.  It lets you change the focal point so you can see the planetary motions as if you were standing on any of the planets.  A great way to understand retrograde motion.

Thanks Paul, for the link.

Bad News for Newspapers

Infographic from the NY Times (I know, ironic isn't it?) that shows the drop in circulation of major newspapers across the U.S.

Heavy debt has dragged several newspaper companies into bankruptcy. The industry’s dwindling revenues have forced some money-losing papers to close, and papers that are for sale are having trouble finding buyers. Experts say that before long, a major American city could be left without a daily paper. (Related Article)

Found on Twitter from @edial

What's In Your Mail?

From Deliver Magazine (Issue 24, Page 7), has a simple infographic that clearly breaks out what’s in your average mail delivery in the U.S.  The illustration is by Jude Buffum.  Its available here as a PDF.

Source: USPS® Household Diary Study: Mail Use and Attitudes, FY 2007

Taking the Train

It's not a complicated one, but I like Good Magazine's summary of the biggest train systems in the world (top 5 U.S. cities and top 5 foreign cities).  The silhouettes represent the daily rides in the city, and the length of the train shows how many miles that system covers.  To the right is a quick map of each city's subway system and some statistics about their subway system.

Thanks Li, for sending in the link!

Space Debris video

Sticking with the Space Debris theme, the ESA (European Space Agency) has this hi-res video on their website showing how crowded Earth orbit has become from 1968-2000.  Same issue as the image yesterday, that the objects are not to scale.  At this scale you would expect constant collisions, but at actual scale you wouldn't be able to see any objects at all.

In this animation, catalogued space debris are shown accumulating around Earth in 4-year increments, including payloads, rocket bodies, and fragments. While the debris objects are not shown to scale, the representation of their density is accurate.

Space Debris image

Great image from MSNBC PhotoBlog that tries to demonstrate how much space junk we have put into orbit around Earth.  I think the downside of this image is that the satellites aren't to scale.  If they were all this large, they would be running into each other all the time.

If you have Windows, you can see this high-res version with Microsoft HDView, but it doesn't work on a Mac.  I was able to see it with Parallels running on my MacBook.

A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. A communications satellite belonging to US company Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite on February 12, 2009.  (ESA via AFP - Getty Images/)

Thanks Karen for sending in the link!

One Month of Spam

From TimGraham.net, Tim plotted out some statistics about all of the spam email he received in February 2008. 

Tim, only 208.5 spam emails a day?  You need to get your email address out into more public places!

Thanks for the link Alwyn!

Mapping the Growth of Target

Nathan Yau over on FlowingData.com has done a great job creating an animated map showing the growth of Target stores across the U.S.

Well, fortune was smiling on me last week, and I got a hold of data for Target opening dates and locations (thnx, Cole). So here it is - a map that shows the growth of Target from 1962 through 2008.

Nathan has promised to combine the data from this map with his previous work mapping The Growth of WalMart, into one map where you can see the differences.  So we'll keep our eyes out for that.

Halo 3 HeatMaps

A while back Bungie.net, the makers of the Halo series of games, started tracking data on their servers about how their different online multiplayer maps are preforming.  They converted the data on kills and deaths in the multiplayer games into heatmaps, and then started publishing the maps online for everyone to see.

The advantages to players are that you can see places to avoid (areas with the highest deaths), and the locations from where the most kills come from.  The map above shows the total data for the map called The Pit.  But you can narrow down the information based on the type of weapon used.  For example the map below shows the locations of the kills made with the sniper rifle.  Meaning that shooting from these locations have been the most successful.  (Also helpful if you keep getting killed by snipers and can't find them)

"Heatmaps are the Doppler Radar System of Death in Halo 3. We're tracking encounters, weapons used and their results in a given game, collecting that data and sharing it with players visually. The key here is 'the darker the red, the more frequent the deaths (or kills, depending on the parameters)'," Bungie explains in its weekly update.