depressing, interesting

The New York Times has an interesting (and somewhat depressing) interactive times series graph of US unemployment rates. The controls let you slice the data demographically to get a sense of how groups you are not a part of might be feeling the effects of the recession. For the dryness of the presentation, this data tells a very compelling and human story.

geolocation + open data = awwesome

Coming across our desk via tweet from Sir Time Berneers Lee: an amazing (if not amazing looking) google maps based data mashup showing marine traffic throughout the world. That is to say, Real Time (not really but close) data showing position, speed and heading for ships throut the worlds major shipping lanes. The Mashup runs on top of a big open data set hosted by the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean, Greece. More information about the project can be found at the open dot dot dot blog. Anyway go check it out.

One funny thing, it shows traffic on canals and rivers, so when you first look at the map you may wonder why there are forty boats in Missouri.

So, so cool.

The team behind the core technology that became photosynth is taking things to a much higher level. Sameer Agarwal and his band of computer vision desperadoes rebuilt Rome (or a reasonable simulation thereof) in just under 24 hours. This feat was pulled off using 150,000 images pulled from Flickr and some extremely hot computer vision research.

Check out the digest version here and the full nerd monty here.

FlowingData, if you don't already read them: start now

FlowingData has a nice post today rounding up 20 data visualizations related to crime and criminals. Most revolve around maps with temporal components shoehorned into a few. We love maps here at Graphient. We love them for how they visually describe space, and we really love them for the way they provide a fixed contextual grid for organizing other kinds of data. The map visualizations presented at FlowingData stop short of adding in other data and stick to simply reporting the facts of crime, but those maps could have been used to introduce and connect all sorts of other (possibly sensitive) socioeconomic data and maybe tell a deeper story about crime.

Last week I was in Boston briefly and thanks to a logistical spasm I had the opportunity to ride the Silverline from Logan Airport to South Station. While waiting for said Silverline I encountered this map:

Detail of the map in question.

I took a picture of the map because of the wear pattern created by countless travelers tracing their fingers over it. In that wear pattern we can see those travelers working out their routes on the Silverline and picking out the different transfer points throughout the system. In essence the map carries a second channel of data relative to the first. Of course this second channel is pretty unscientific but we haven’t let that stop us from appreciating the aesthetics of information presentation before and we won’t start now.

Later in the day I was talking to my Dad about this phenomena, and the idea that data is being recorded in the physical world all around us, all the time, simply by the way we use things. He mentioned Wells Cathedral in Somerset, England. The stone stairs of the cathedral’s chapter house date to 1306, and they have been eroded along the preferred path worshippers and clergy have taken ascending and descending those stairs all these years.

Those very steps

While much of this naturally recorded information is of limited utility or has ambiguous meaning, we find ourselves oddly stimulated by the idea that a channel of information is projected onto the world in this way.

I’m going to get a little off topic here.

Here at Graphient our thoughts are with those engaged in a higher stakes game than any startup ever could be. This morning I set Tweetdeck to search for “Tehran” for about an hour and watched the messages of hope and revolution stream by. It is amazing to see a technology derided by so many as useless and narcissistic have such a profound effect on world affairs.

Good luck to the Iranian people. And to Twitter: congratulations, your shipment of relevance has arrived.

By now, you have probably seen Sir Tim Berners-Lee talking about the importance of Open Data at this year’s TED conference. If you haven’t here it is. Take a look because it’s important:

I’m posting this now because the Open Data movement seems to be getting some traction–at least in Government circles. A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration launched Data.gov a clearing house for government data. Washington D.C. has become a leader in municipal public data, putting some 260 feeds of data out in raw form. And now the UK has decided to get in on the act: Gordon Brown the embattled Prime Minister, announced yesterday that none other than Sir Tim Himself would be heading up the initiative to open  England’s data up to the public.

This was largely damage control after a series of embarrassing disclosures about how members of Parliament expense things, but it is a welcome development all the same.

We here at Graphient wish Sir Tim the best of luck moving forward and very much hope that FreeTime will become the application of choice for those looking at all that data.

Read the BBC article here.

We’ve started building out our new site. Go take a look. Then come back and say complimentary things about it in the comments section of this post.

Visual design has long been looked at by many of those in business as a coat of paint to be applied to a finished product to help it sell. In this world view design takes a back seat to advertising and its significance as a discipline is reduced.

This is (thankfully) starting to change, largely due to the universal recognition of the importance of User Interface design. Still, design remains a poorly understood and difficult process for most companies. So much so that good UI design can actually be used as an indicator of a company’s health. This was shown rather effectively by Teehan + Lax and their UX fund.

This is because of two things. The first is that good design, particularly good UI design creates a more attractive, easier to use product. Such a product will sell better than something unattractive and difficult to use. The second is that Design is hard. Design is particularly hard for dysfunctional groups or groups made up of individuals with competing visions or interests.

The execution of a well designed product can be seen as a sign or corporate health in that it is the end result of a series of interactions between very complex systems of needs. Only a well managed organization can sort out these complex systems properly. It is a miracle it happens at all.

So the next time you have a particularly easy and rewarding interaction with a well designed product, think not just of the designers, but also of the executives who had the good sense to pay for quality and the presence of mind not to ruin it.