Life inside a cell - video

This is a very impressive 8 minute animation created for Harvard's Molecular & Cellular Biology program that "transports Harvard Biology undergraduate students into a three-dimensional journey through the microscopic world of a cell". the animation illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings & respond to an external stimulus.
Harvard University expects a performance improvement of its biology students of almost 30% by using such visualization tools. Here with a narrator.

We feel fine

The 2006 Pixel Award, winner of the category, Weired is "We feel fine". It's an exploration of human emotion, in six movements. Yes it is creative.

Jonathan Harris - one of the creators - has a website worth exploring.
Source: juiceanalytics

How popular is your name?

How popular is your name? The Baby name wizard can tell if you your kids name is trendy or unique. Select boy/girl and type the name in the upper left corner (see where the O is).

Graphical representation

This is a great example of a complex reality made into a simple picture . I hope someone develops a software that can make graphs like this.

The 2007 edition has just been released. It become so popular that it now has it's own homepage with posters and all.

Eavesdropping - Tjuvlyssnat

En typisk 'må bra site', trots en del elakheter. Här kan man hitta många underbara vardagshändelser som får en att skratta högt.

Gapminder

I've just had a lesson in the powerful visualisation. Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. This is a great software and I am just waiting to play around with it. Apperently it can interact with my favorite tool of choice, Excel.
You can watch a 20min webcast of Hans Rosling talk at the TED, or a 1 hour presentation of Ola Rosling talk at the Google TechTalks.
Now combine this with Crystal Xcelsius and you have a very powerful combination. Clearly Microsoft needs to find a strategy as Flash is stealing the show everywhere.

Spore

I just saw a gameplay demo of Spore, the next big hit being produced by Maxis and published by EA. I not a gamer but this looks really promising. Basically they wrap up all game concepts you ever heard of in one huge game (except maybe car racing and kung fu). The video is a cut-out of a presentation held at the Game Developers Conference 2006. See the links below for a link the the whole presentation and a nice flash.

Sexual network map

For the first time, sociologists have mapped the romantic and sexual relationships of an entire high school over 18 months, providing evidence that these adolescent networks may be structured differently than researchers previously thought.

The results showed that, unlike many adult networks, there was no core group of very sexually active people at the high school.

Island of Genius

Savant Syndrome is a rare, but spectacular, condition in which persons with various developmental disorders, including autistic disorder, have astonishing islands of ability, brilliance or talent that stand in stark, markedly incongruous contrast to overall limitations.

Daniel Tammet first came to worldwide attention in March 2004 on international Pi Day (3/14, of course) when he recited, from memory, Pi to 22,514 decimal places.

The story of Leslie Lemke begins in Milwaukee in 1952. His mother gave him up for adoption at birth. "Leslie Lemke is a memorable man." That was Morley Safer's description of Leslie after he watched him play the piano as part of a 60 Minutes program in 1983 on savant syndrome. Dustin Hoffman watched the program and was "moved to tears" by Leslie.

Other fashinating Video excerpts.
Kim Peek: The Real Rain Man, Gilles Tréhin: City Creator, ...

Speedtest

Applications that test bandwidth speeds have been around for years, but Speedtest.net takes the concept a step further.

The site allows you to select servers to ping from around the country on an interactive map and graphically displays connections as they travel with varying speeds along the way. It also lets you store results of tests for your computer and sort them by date, time, speed and distance.

Coro36ink

Coro36ink is a very talented artist. The way he handles light, black and color composition is just pure amazing. His city oil painting are is worth to spend a few minutes one.
Don't miss his archive, even though it takes a bit of time to browse through.

Matching colors

Need a killer color theme for your web site, art project, or magazine pages? Head to Adobe Kuler, an interactive web-based app that whips up snazzy themes in a matter of seconds.
It's free for now (and in beta); hopefully Adobe will see fit to keep it that way

Other apps: Color Blender, Color Palette Generator, ColorJack Sphere, ColorWizard