The Tallest Building: Burj Dubai

The Burj Dubai is a construction project to build the world's tallest building in Dubai.  Their website has a nice interactive comparison to the other key skyscrapers in the world.  The photo-like images on a black background with the reflection is very similar to the Apple Computer photo slideshows.

The goal of Burj Dubai is not simply to be the world's highest building.  It's to embody the world's highest aspirations.  Burj Dubai looks different depending on where you're standing.  For those living nearby, it is a shining accomplishment - tangible proof of Dubai's central role in a growing world.

Thanks Alwyn!

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis

This is a tall flow chart helping describe the financial crisis, from blog.mint.com.

Thanks Alwyn!

It's the Economy, Stupid!

Great timeline from GOOD Magazine (via picdit.com).

What most of the doom-and-gloom reports on our economy don’t provide is perspective—a historical survey of an economy that’s been through more than a few ups and downs in its day. Here’s a farsighted view of how our temperamental economic machine works, and a close-up of how it stands today.

Thanks Adam!

NEW Death and Taxes 2009 poster

New Death and Taxes infographic for 2009!  Interactive viewer let's you zoom in to see all of the details.

"Death and Taxes:2009" is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President's budget request for 2009. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.

The poster provides a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. 

The Death and Taxes poster from 2007 was my initial post on Cool Infographics, so I'm very excited to see this update.  Now the 2009 version is available to purchase as a poster here.

Savings Mis-Trust video

Our friends over at XPLANE have done a fabulous video explaining what led up to the recent credit crisis in the U.S. economy.  A great job simplifying a complex problem.

Thanks Parker, and great job to your team!

A Year of Heavy Loses

Over at Nytimes.com, they have a good treemap showing the drop in market capitalization over the past year of most of the big financial firms on Wall Street.  It's a little bit interactive, in that when you hover your mouse over any box, you will see more details.

Found on infosthetics.com

Probabilistic Stock Market Forecast

I won't claim to understand or attempt to explain the math behind the investolution.com charts that predict the overall stock market for the next 40 days.

This page contains the prediction for S&P 500 Index minimum and maximum daily closing prices over the next 40 trading days.  

It is predicted that S&P 500 Index will not close under 1,178 and over 1,295 between the dates September 19, 2008 and November 14, 2008. This prediction method was accurate for 71.0% and 95.0% of the cases (for minimum and maximum predictions, respectively) within an error margin of +-5% in the past. 

Thanks Andrew for sending in the link.

Small Gambling Addiction Spending Visual

I love this very simple but powerful visual comparison of the gambling revenues and the money spent on gambling addiction support programs.  The author is only trying to communcate one point, and gets his message across very stongly.  I believe it was done by Tim Broderick, from the Daily Herald.

Found on InfographicsNews.blogspot.com.  Looks like Chiqui Esteban is starting a series of visual comparison graphics over there.

Obama Funding Graphic

A small poster from our friends at XPLANE,

How Obama Reinvented Campaign Finance Barack Obama is the first major candidate to decline participation in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He’s found a more effective way to raise money — by leveraging the power of the American people through online Social Networks.

Available as a PDF formatted for printing on 11x17 paper.

The Infographic that Saved a Million Lives

Great story from 37signals.com about a very simple infographic that motivated Bill and Melinda Gates to change the focus of their charity spending.

“No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in Africa and Asia,” says NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof about an infographic in a ‘97 Times article that spurred Bill and Melinda Gates to take action on public health.

...But then bill confessed that actually it wasn’t the article itself that had grabbed him so much—it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.