FREE Infographic Holiday Cards!

While supplies last, Funnel, Inc. is offereing a free set of Holiday Infographic Cards to anyone who registers on their mailing list.  You won't find the link on their website, but the direct URL is http://www.funnelinc.com/holiday. Order yours quick!

Also, there are three FREE Holiday desktop infographic images available on the same page at various resolutions.

Chess: Watch the Artificial Intelligence

This is really awesome.  Thinking Machine 4 has an online chess game that lets you watch the computer evaluate all of the future moves in real time each time its the computer's turn.

When the machine (Black) is thinking, a network of curves is overlaid on the board.  The curves show potential moves--often several turns in the future--considered by the computer. Orange curves are moves by black; green curves are ones by white. The brighter curves are thought by the program to be better for white. 

I found this posted by Nathan on Simple Complexity.

Ben Fry's Zipcode Project

Ben Fry is the author of Visualizing Data, and describes the ZipCode project in his book.  Each dot on the map is one zip code, and as you type a zip code, it highlights all of the dots that share that portion of the zip code.  You can turn on the "zoom" feature that zooms farther into the map for each digit you add.

This is built with the open source Processing tool that was recently released to the world as version 1.0.

Here are all of the zip codes that start with "6"

Thanks Steve for sending the link!

Here's a link to Ben's book on Amazon:

10,000+ iPhone Apps Mosaic

To help Apple celebrate 10,000 iPhone apps in the iTunes App Store, TapTapTap created this iPhone mosaic using icons from the available apps.

Check out the TapTapTap blog.

Here is the high-resolution image.

World of Apple is offering the image as a poster for $50

The Species-Scape

Christopher Taylor posted this image on his Catalogue of Organisms blog, and it has raised a little controversey about the details.  The intent is that the relative size of each organism in the image is representative of the number of species in that group.  So the large fly represents the huge number of insect species.  Towards that intent, I believe the image succeeds, but I have read some disagreement about the specific numbers used to develop the image.

In case you're wondering where the mammals are, we're represented by the reindeer cowering underneath the mushroom.

Two very similar images with some differences are also available.  One from the University of Sydney:

And another on from Cornell University: (this link wasn't working for me)

No matter which is exactly correct (and there's no way to tell), you get the point how small number of species of mammals are compared to the others.

Thanks Kevin, for sending in the link!

The Three Laws of Great Graphs

Back in July, Seth Godin posted his"three laws of great graphs" for PowerPoint presentations.  I may not agree with Seth's laws, but I thought it worth sharing for discussion.

1. One Story: While I don't agree for all infographics, I do agree with this specifically for giving PowerPoint presentation.  Steve Jobs is a master at this, or the master is whoever makes his keynote presentations.

2. No Bar Charts: I don't disagree that there are some horrible bar charts out there, but I don't think they should be eliminated altogether.  They have their place, and since they are the default chart in PowerPoint they often get used when another type of chart would be more appropriate.

3. Motion: I'll cautiously agree with this one.  Animation in PowerPoint is often distracting, but can be used as Seth describes.  Don't get caught up in slide transitions, but use animation to highlight the point you are trying to convey to your audience.

How Star Wars Changed the World

The original Star Wars has certainly gone on to produce more than just sequels.  It has created the people and the technologies that are now considered the best in the industry.  Michelle Devereaux created this family tree for Wired magazine back in 2005 and I love how the line colors indicate people, technologies and company connections, but the tree is organized into movies, sound, effects and technologies.

I actually believe the tree is incomplete.  I think Star Wars had far greater reach and influence that what Michelle mapped out here.

It all started with a band of rebels who wanted to help a farmboy follow his dream.  Three decades later, the Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and videogames (LucasArts).  Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors.  This chart maps the people, companies and technologies touched by the Force. - Michelle Devereaux

Thanks Alwyn!

Welcome to the world baby...Processing

In my email yesterday I received a note announcing the release of Processing 1.0.  It's very exciting to see this project release to the world.  There have been many beta versions leading up to this release (162 versions in fact), but for those interested in creating your own infographics this is big news.  What is Processing, you ask?

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.
Processing is free to download and available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Some of the infographics I have highlighted here on Cool Infographics have been created with the earlier versions of Processing, and I'm hoping for more to come.

The history of olympic medals

 

Grace Lee is a Junior at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York City.  She went back and visually laid out all of the medals won be every country in every Olympics since Athens in 1896.  Across the bottom it also shows how many nations participated each year and how many athletes were involved.  This was a project in her Information Design class, and she did a fabulous job!

The games have always brought of this world together in peace, leaving behind any racial or cultural boundaries.  The Olympic games create a time when the world can be smaller and united as a human race, rather than separate nations.  With the summer games in Beijing, China, and the upcoming games in Vancouver, Canada, the Olympic games will continue to be a time of friendly competition.

Thanks Grace.  I love how this project turned out.

By popular request I have uploaded the full PDF version here.

Seasonal Visual Timelines

 

Roberto Rovira, and assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Florida International University's, School of Architecture, was kind enough to allow me to share some of his work with the readers of Cool Infographics.

 

Working as a consultant, these seasonal timelines were developed to show the activities and the plants used in a proposal for a project he led called "Envisioning Hudson Square" on the Hudson River near Manhattan, NY.

 

The first one shows the time of year that different activities would be active in this green area during the year like bicycling, bird watching and ice skating.  It also shows the different wildlife that would be present during the year like blue heron, striped bass and snowy egrets. Using the visual timeline you can see how the different activities overlap and that there would always be some type of activity during the year.

 

The second timeline from the same project show the proposed plant and trees to be used in the project, and with the use of the visual timeline shows their color and appearance throughout the year.

 

Graphics by Roberto Rovira, RLA, with assistance from landscape designer Kelly Woodward. Roberto is Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at Florida International University (www.fiu.edu/~soa) and Senior Landscape Architect consultant for ArquitectonicaGEO (www.arquitectonicageo.com), a Miami-based landscape and planning firm. He led GEO's design team and developed the concepts for 'Hudson Square Prints Green!', a proposal for a 30-block New York City district on Manhattan's West Side, adjacent to the Hudson River.