Information Design and Data Visualization - Articles Archive
from October 24, 2005 to November 16, 2004

I have a problem with authority. It's not that I'm independent, insubordinate, and contrarian. I am, but that's not my problem. My problem is with the rising abuse of the word amongst bloggers, wikipedians, folksonomists, and other social software activists. In the good old days, not so ... read more

Google has finally launched its own Web-based RSS Reader during last week Web 2.0 conference. The new RSS tool from Google sports a good set of basic features while providing, in my humble opinion, a great interface and user experience. The interface is all based on the ... read more

Scoping the contents of an information site is a tough task. that is why major search engines have become the major, most used and accessed gateways to anyone site pages. They are indeed, by far, the fastest and easiest method to discover and find out whether ... read more

Developed by Stefan Kellner and Felix Petersen here is an open collaborative effort for annotating locations. Called Plazes, this is a grassroots approach to location-aware interaction, which leverages the local network you are connected to as a location reference. As Enki Boehm’s blog reported in June, ... read more

CSS Zen Garden is an interesting initiative launched in 2003 to demonstrate the benefits of using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). With the same fixed HTML code, many web designers have contributed different CSS files that produce a dramatically different web page, with the same contents. ... read more

New media picks of the week is my weekly basket of tasty new media resources, online tools and new software tools I think are worth your attention. Try for yourself, download, install and learn some pretty interesting things with these great new resources and tools. Here is ... read more

New media picks of the week is my weekly basket of tasty resources, tools and services. These are this week little gems that I have run into, have accidentally discovered or been pointed to or have read about in articles, RSS feeds and newsletters I subscribe ... read more

Another new Google release has just made its debut, providing the first public version of the long-anticipated Google geographic search technology, a unique tool bringing together local search with satellite images and maps from all around the world. Google Earth provides a stunning visual, and I ... read more

NameVoyager is a fascinating information visualization tool which allows you to "see" the universe of American first names in ways that can help you see which names are or have been most popular at any point in American recorded history and to discover and consider names ... read more

Have you ever wanted to see a place before you actually went there? A far-away house? A shopping-mall? A stadium? If you live in the US, now you can. Google has just incorporated the amazing Keyhole satellite visualization technology into Google Maps and Google Local. Now, when ... read more

As software applications are increasingly weaved into the Web and within other Internet-aware applications, information and application controls encounter a multitude of opportunities to mesh intelligently into each other. Photo credit: loveu4ever Here are some examples:Alerts RSS news aggregation Route finding (interactive maps) Visual searching Music mixers Media players P2P file sharing Collaboration spaces In ... read more

MusicPlasma, the visual music discovery engine that Robin Good already classified as 'interesting, promising' a year ago, has just been enhanced with impressive movie search capabilities. The renewed service has been renamed to LivePlasma and now covers bands, artists, movies, actors and directors in a multilingual ... read more

There is no need to link to all sections from each and every page on a site. Photo credit:Renato Cardoso We should limit pervasive navigation to five or six basic features and let people go back to the front page, if they want to start from ... read more

Following up on his recent coverage about OmniScope and its upcoming, lightweight, Flash-based counterpart FeatureFinder, Robin Good has just made his audio interview available with Edward Forbes, managing director of Iokio. The interview was held last week. Omniscope 3-step approach from data to visualization By listening to this ... read more

If you are interested in data visualization for the scope of providing valuable and entertaining information to a wide and popular audience, this mini-manifesto from Princeton University Information Networks Archive (INA), may give you some good inspiration. Prepared by Jonathan Harris of Flaming Toast Productions (now Number27), ... read more

Each of the bimonthly newsletters sent out by Useit.com Jakob Nielsen is a little treasure of practical usability advice. Photo credit: Philipp Mamat In yesterday's issue, titled Reviving Advanced Hypertext, Nielsen once again breaks a convincing lance for the introduction and standardization of several useful hypertext features: ... read more

Iokio Omniscope is a desktop tool that allows direct visualization of database/spreadsheet data while providing powerful filter/search capabilities. Omniscope is a great new tool to publish, visually explore and interactively search through complex datasets online. click here to enlarge Omniscope turns your data into interactive visualizations that can ... read more

When you're looking for a particular folder or file on your computer, some people will prefer to identify it using graphical icons, whilst others will prefer to use the textual descriptor. For example, with Windows Explorer in Windows XP, you have the option to view the ... read more

When you design a Web site should you design first for being functionally effective or you should design first for achieving aesthetic balance? Ben Hunt, the Web Doctor, has just published an early excerpt from the introduction to his forthcoming book "Web Design from Scratch - the ... read more