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.