Data visualisations

Primary Data sources
* New: The Guardian, NewYorkTimes
* Old: Information is beautiful, Information aestatics

Articles
Subway map of Human Discoveries
Top Secret America Blog
Retirement Ages in OECD countries
Time to reverse a recession
Factors that influence the Political views
Can President tame the Business Cycle?
Misery index - unemployment & fisical x
Health care spending
Time to turn of a recession
Costs of living compared
The cost of old people
The world in Oil resources and consumption
National debts of OECD countries

Scientific
Ocean heat driven vehicles
10x better heat exchanger

Feelings
Feelings Quatified (research so far, feelings in life, beauty in all), old link

Save energy with Infrared map

A good idea to make a "Infrared save energy map".
The house owner can see how well his/her property is insulated.

World Map Of Touristyness

Great places-to-avoid heatmap using distribution of photos on Panoramio. Nice idea! By BlueMoon.ee

Source: InformationIsBeautiful.net

Microsoft Live Drive - 50Gb free

Microsoft Live Drive offers 50Gb storage space for free.

With the free SDExplorer addin the space is available direct in Explorer (without login).

Source: Freewaregenious

Stockmapper

The picture says all. Click and try the interactice charts

USA report - More than 1 of 10 is starving

Feeding America reports that the number of people that receivs food support during 2009 is now more than 37million of their population of the 310 million. The increase is nearly 50% in just 5 years time. (source: DN)

Few of those can afford a private medical health plan and less likely to make pension savings. Food and house (Morgages) are the two primary priorities (Maslow). There is a tipping point but I hope the 50% increase is not a early warning sign.

If a major natural disaster - like an earth quake in the Bay area - would strike, the Stockmarket would collaps. The hungry, and social security needy would increase dramatically. In contrast to many other countries, the social security sector rests heavily on Private organisations. Social security can be said to be, not a legal obligation/institution but a free choice*.

Americas debt in now mainly owned by China. They are worried about the state of USA, and are bound to ask USA to take necessary measures to stabalize their country. They are not yet ready to take up the butan as the World leader. They need all power/focus on their domestic events.

Paradigm shifts have happen previously in the history of man kind - often followed by great movement, instability and realignments. I can look at it from trade and ideas as rejuvenating. I can look at from values/ideology and legality, with fear. Especially since IT is a powerful tool in the hands of law enforcers. History has shown us that it takes very few people to control many.

* The free choice selection process is intresting. We get more choices and are required to take spend more time to select. Now if the selection process could be automated, it would free our time. For instance, when I select energy supplier it is now based on a number of simple criterias, and done automatically and instantanious (elskling.se). Same thing when it comes to selecting internet service supplier etc.

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures

"Hello, old friends. I am back from dark months of data mining, here now to present my ores. To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things:

• Facial Attitude. Is the person smiling? Staring straight ahead? Doing that flirty lip-pursing thing?
• Photo Context. Is there alcohol? Is there a pet? Is the photo outdoors? Is it in a bedroom?
• Skin. How much skin is the person showing? How much face? How much breasts? How much ripped abs?

In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong. For interested readers, I explain our measurement process, and how we collected our data, at the end of the post. All my bar charts are zeroed on the average picture. Now to the data."

Read more: The 4 Myths

Copy from blog.okcupid.com

Personal 3D Food Printer - MIT-media lab

Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.

Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by Cornucopia's chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

This project is currently starting, at MIT-media lab.

Other interesting projects: electronic popables

Target Point - Chart wars & What is rich income?

A great, short talk by TargetPoint's VP and Director of Research, Alex Lundry, at DC Ignite. He addresses the issues of subjective messaging through visualization, the emergence of open data, some ideal data visualization tools, a set of quick lessons in graphic literacy, and a short list of recommended visualization books, all within the time span of 5 minutes.

Watch the movie below.

Copy from: Information aesteatics

"What is rich income"

- Another interesting article fromTarget point -

The most frequent response, the mode, was $100,000. The median response was $250,000 – that is, half of the country gave an answer above $250K and half were below. The mean is too heavily influenced by extreme values and is a correspondingly inefficient measure of the midpoint. We can also estimate a nationwide consensus at the 75th percentile, where ¾ of the country defines rich below the $500,000 mark.



Still despite the fact that all demographic effects are subsumed by income, we can’t help but point to a number of interesting and fun significant differences in the crosstabs. For instance:

• GENDER: men’s median response is $250k, while women’s is 200k.
• IDEOLOGY: conservatives have a higher “rich” threshold, $250k, than liberals, $200k, and moderates line up with conservatives with a median response of $250k.
• 2008 VOTE: mirroring ideology, “rich” to a McCain voter means an annual income of $250k (median), while an Obama voter sets the bar at $200k.

Finally, it’s important to put these numbers into their proper perspective: median annual household income in the United States is about $44,389 (from 2005 Census Bureau data); if we were to arbitrarily define the rich as the top 20% of household incomes the lower limit would be $88,030 a far cry from our survey’s median of $250,000. Even the top 5% of household incomes begin at $157,176, nearly $100,000 short of our survey’s median response.

Copy from: Target Point

Knol - Ethics theory

An Introduction the Ethical Reasoning

This knol provides an introductory overview of ethical reasoning as a foundation for professional ethics. It presents some of the philosophical background to ethical thought and attempts to answer the question - "How can we know the difference between right and wrong?".

While the knol is aimed primarily at students in higher education and young IT professionals , it is equally relevant to other disciplines and professions.

Contents

• How Can We Know the Difference Between Right and Wrong?
• The Golden Rule
• The Utility Principle
• An Important Philosophical Distinction
• Discussion
• Bibliography

We all have a sense right and wrong - or good and bad. There are things that we feel we (or others) ought to do, and other things that we feel we (or others) ought not to do. Ethics is the study of how we distinguish between these alternatives.

This knol is intended to familiarise students and young professionals with the basic concepts of ethics and ethical reasoning in order to equip them for the responsibilities that accompany professional status.

Read more...

Other interesting links:
* Knol
* "How to Use the Harvard Style of Referencing"
* Gold
* "Laying a house foundation"
* ...

Northern Europeans are Uniquely Depigmented

Interesting article:
"White," of course, is a a social designation. The question really is, "Why are northern Europeans depigmented?" Here is a map of human skin tone. The natives of northern Europe are oddly light-skinned. They are paler than anyone else on earth.

Read more

Public statistics

Not sorted

Now debated

2012 End of the World: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/2012-the-end-of-the-world/
N1H1 Vaccine: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/is-the-h1n1-swine-flu-vaccine-safe/
Fatal infections: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/fatal-infection/

Disasters
Nuclears to destroy the world: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb/
The drug world: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/drugs-world/
Drugs: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/24/drugs-trade-drugsCalories&Coffein: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/caffeine-vs-calories/#comment
Refugees: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/16/refugees
Right-Left parties: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/leftvright_world.html

Social web: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/who-rules-the-social-web/

Standard of living
Salaries in UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/17/public-sector-pay-uk-data
Public persons: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/17/public-sector-pay-uk-data
Best country for children: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/20/children-unicef-report-2009-afghanistan
Child poverty: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/sep/11/child-poverty-statistics-uk-countries
World corruption: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/17/corruption-index-transparency-international
Expensive cities: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jul/07/global-economy-economics
Government debt: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/01/government-borrowing-economy

US debt: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/13/useconomy-china

Environment
Kyoto treaty: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/kyoto-whos-on-target/

Carbon emisson per person: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-emissions-per-person-capita
Atmospheric CO2 concentration: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-concentration-emissions-climate
Peak oil: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/13/peak-oil-iea-uppsalaMeat consumption: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change
Bottled water: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/bottled-water-consumption-region
Ozon hole: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/size-ozone-hole-layer
Total energy use: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/energy-use-demand-efficiency-fossil-fuels

Human

World population growth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/2009/sep/02/world-population-growth-resources-control
Elderly: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jul/20/population-older-people
People living in cities: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/aug/18/percentage-population-living-cities
Sprint speed: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/aug/17/usain-bolt-100-metres
Evolution: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jul/01/evolution

Visualisations
Visualisation tools: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/15/google-ibm

The sweet spot: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/interesting-easy-beautiful-true/
Other: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/great-visualizers-michael-paukner/

Nice background music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji7jn4z2wTQ

Mapping the Human ‘Diseasome’

Researchers created a map linking different diseases, represented by circles, to the genes they have in common, represented by squares.

'Secret Agent', the 24th CGChallenge

The mission for 'Secret Agent', the 24th CGChallenge, was to depict characters and events involving espionage, gadgets, guns and evil geniuses, via a still image or video. The field of almost 1,200 undercover artists who took up the challenge did not disappoint.

"Entrants once again astounded us with the quality and breadth of styles of their work. The CGChallenges offer a chart for the evolving excellence, imagination and capability of today's digital artists to produce world class entertainment and art.

Next, the Winners

Don't miss the Videos: Video1, Video2, Video3

Harnessing Waste Heat

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2009) — In everything from computer processor chips to car engines to electric powerplants, the need to get rid of excess heat creates a major source of inefficiency. But new research points the way to a technology that might make it possible to harvest much of that wasted heat and turn it into usable electricity.

How different groups spend their day

Sleeping, eating, working and watching television take up about two-thirds of the average day.

Link

Ôr'ganik constructions

Interesting details when you zoom in.
Presentation Movie

Eurovision Song Contest - visualized statistics

Here is the Eurovision Song Contest statistics from 1994-2008, visualized. It's in Norwegian but it gives some good insights to neighbour voting, or not?

Trackmania

It's old but still fun to show



More: 1
Official page

Portable computer 2.0 - 6th sense

This demo, from the Fluid Interfaces Lab of Pattie Maes at MIT, and spearheaded by PhD student Pranav Mistry, was the buzz of TED. SixthSense [pranavmistry.com] is a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. The innovative device allows to literally overlay everyday objects with real-time visualizations, in order to inform users about normally invisible information relevant to the objects in view. Imagine ingredient pie charts beamed on top of apple pies. Imagine Facebook comments projected on people's foreheads.

Source: Information Aesthetics

Create your own music - Dub FX

Dub FX, is a beatbox artist who street performs all over Europe. Watching him construct one of his multilayered compositions is impressive—he throws some pitch-shifted bass underneath ethereal treble highlights and solid hip-hop vocals:

Here are some more samples, 2, and just Mr Woodnote.

Roam Bi - from Xcelsius

RoamBi transform your existing data from a variety of sources into state-of-the-art, interactive visualizations for the iPhone. Explore and analyze your data with the ease of playing a video game and the power of an enterprise reporting tool.

And for now, It's Free to Try.

Just register, then use RoamBi.com to start turning your own data into dynamic visualizations for the iPhone.

Santiago Becerra behind RoamBi also started Xcelsius (another software I have written about). Buy Xcelsius

If you have time please check out Antivia, mentioned as Bi 2.0. I think it too early but it's a step in the right direction. , i

Source: Information Aesthetics

Why do we organize?

Probably genetically related. Which in turn relates to human values rather than a coincidence.

Source of picture: Donation Coder

TED - spreading ideas

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 100 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted."

TED mission: Spreading ideas.

Here are some talks that I found both interesting and fun:
John Doerr, Ken Robinsson, Richard Dawkins, Hans Rosling,2, Tony Robbinsson, Jill Bolte Taylor, William McDonough, Robert Full, A.J. Jacobs, Robert Ballard, Jay Walker, Juan Enriquez, Shai Agassi
For the best talks, select the most discussed or e-mailed talks.


New visual interface

Since I still find TED very interesting, I bump the post (From July 2007 to 2009 March).

World Builder

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Quite interesting
"The movie above entitled 'World Builder by filmmaker Bruce Branit. World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. We really like it, its not often you get a story weaved around the creation of 3D worlds."

Source: Digital Urban

Traveling

Before you go, you might want to take a sneak preview of the highlights.

"Arounder takes those virtual walkthroughs you see on real estate sites to another level, creating 360-degree, full screen panoramas of locations around the world. The current application is primarily travel- enticing you to picture yourself on the shores of Waikiki, or in Parma's Teatro Farnese. But the ability of Arounder to create an enveloping sense of place could serve many planning applications in the not too distant future."

Source: Planetizen

Plastic Logic - 1 year left

New Demo
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4838446848396478916

The Compartmentalized Desktop

Kseve has put together a workspace-oriented desktop with a few programs.

This desktop is a combination of several tools including layered wallpaper to establish boundaries between items, previously mentioned Fences to further enforce those boundaries by creating the gray corrals around the icons. Rounding out the computer-as-real-desktop theme is Launchy, skinned with a sticky note skin. The final tweak comes courtesy of Start Killer, which removes the start button in Windows Vista. The widgets are native to Vista, but Windows XP users can install the sidebar too.

Kseve's Work Desktop [Flickr]

Modified copy from Lifehacker

OLAP Cube for Excel

Articles:
1. Create OLAP Cube
2. CUBE Functions 4: Deconstructing the PivotTable
3. Creating data cubes with Excel and a database

And the Winner is .... the European Union

The European Union won most medals in the Olympic games and Paralymipic summer games 2008.

In the Olympics, EU won 2-3 times as many medals as China and US.
In the Paralympics, EU won 2-3 times as many medals as China and 5 times more than US.
Compared per inhabitant China is far behind and US is slightly behind.

Now the interesting is when the media use this information. Will this trigger Euro-nationalistic feelings? The "We won" syndrome.
Does this say anything about Several countries compared to Several states compared to One large country?

Some Software

Screen Capture
BB-Flashback Express

Screen share
Mikogi
Yuuguu

PDF
Best PDF-writers
PDF Split & Merge, Gios PDF Splitter & Merge
PDF to Excel (or Word)

Transfer large files
EatLime

Software lists
Freeware lists & reviews (Gizmo's)
Best freeware sites
Open Source ALTernative
Sourceforge Software List


Other
Zipeg, Peazip, 7-zip
MultiMonitor
Media Decoder, FLV editor
Password managers
Zoho, Office live
Desktop Screen stream
Feed creator
Disk Defragmenter

Screen recorders +/-

Camtasia
+ used by many professional. Has everything
+ good Learnings center: High Quality and Small file size
~ $299 30day trial

Jing - what is it
+ On-line freeware. 5min limit
- Can not zoom.

BB Flashback - get started
+ Appear sometimes on "Giveaway of the day"
+ Simple to use
- Can not zoom
~ $225

Instant Demo - Tutorial
+ Easy to get started
+ Very small file size and still High quality (0,1Mb/min). File type .swf
+ Demo version can be used indefinitely
+ streaming playback
~ $299 watermarked endless trial

CamStudio - Blog
+ Open source/Freeware. File type .swf
- Can not zoom
- still sound problems?

Links

Quick Note:
Teach2000(memorycards)
Automatic 3D-models
How to surf sites that are blocked by your ISP or a company firewall
Fleshmaps, Bedpost
Ubiquity, 2
Teddy
Google redesigned
Report portal OLAP/OWC

Mymagazines.com

Mygazines is a site that could turn out to be too good to be true. It allows users to share magazine articles by uploading them to the site. This then allows for anyone to view those magazine articles free of charge. It is very easy, and possible, to read an entire magazine right on the site. The folks running Mygazines say that they, “take great pride in providing a platform for people and businesses to share articles and magazines in an interactive and fun format.”If you thought for a moment that this doesn’t sound like it’s particularly legal, that’s because it’s not. They are encouraging their users to infringe on copyrights.

Despite the legal issues that surround the site, it may be hard for anyone to shut them down. CNET points out that the site is registered in Anguilla, down in the Caribbean, and that it is hosted in Sweden by PRQ. PRQ happens to be owned by the same crew that runs The Pirate Bay . Given this, we imagine Mygazines could potentially be around for a while.

Source: CybernetNews

RoofRay Determines the Solar Potential of Your Roof

This is quite interesting:

"If high energy prices have convinced you that solar energy might be the ticket to cheaper bills, head to web site RoofRay to determine the solar potential of your roof.

As you can see from the video demo, the web site lets you draw the area you're interested in adding solar panels to on a Google Maps mashup, determining everything from surface area to slope.

RoofRay will then estimate the power potential of your roof. It may not be the most accurate estimate you can get, but if you're considering harnessing the power of the sun, it seems like a good starting point."

Looking forward to see a program that can use Google maps to auto detects roofs(+angles) and link that to Weather sites with seasonal light hours and starts to calculate community potentials. Same thing would be possible for other natural energy sources. Interesting spot market.

Source

Box office graph

a visualization of the 2008 US movie box office revenues. each graph shows the trends in the top 25 movies at the box office for each weekend in a year. the color is based on the movie's debut week so that long-running movies gradually start to stand out from newer movies with different colors.
Source, Artist

Discussion forum

Here is an interesting example of how to visualize the Discussion arenas:

Here is one example of a Discussions arenas, where People are willing to speak or discuss:

Facts providers
TheGapminder just released Trendalyzer - OECD Factbook 2008. Trendalyze - Classic is still available. Many Eyes has a forum for OECD Factbook 2007.
Combine the Discussion arenas, Easy access to facts and Visualizations of the effects*, and you will have a powerful Lobby machine.

*The Effect can viewed in the Presidential election chart, under Trends.

Comparison of Spreadsheet functions

This is a Comparison of Spreadsheet Functions between Excel, Google Spreadsheets, EditGrid, ThinkFree - Calc, OpenOffice Calc and Zoho Sheets made in July 2007. It consists of more than 500 unique Spreadsheet functions.

It took some time to compile this list since the quality of the Suppliers Spreadsheet functions lists are far from flawless. Also the interpretation of what category a certain function belongs to varies. Since then I have not attempted an update.

Still, I think it is the most complete Spredsheet function comparison list right now.


Update June-2008:
EditGrid just took a great leap with the introduction of 41 External Data Retrieval Functions. They now have more then twice the amount of functions compared to Google, and more the 50% more the Excel and the other competitors. Here is one example what you can do with the new external data retrieve functions.

Fredrik Härén - Del 1 & 2

Del 1
Sverige anses ofta ha en välutbildad befolkning. Men hur mycket vet vi egentligen om världens två största länder, Kina och Indien? I allmänhet inte så mycket. Det menar i alla fall Fredrik Härén.




Del 2
Mer av Fredrik Härén från Kunskapens dag. Bland annat om skillnaderna mellan oss i "developed countries" i väst och de nya ekonomierna i framförallt Asien, i "developing countries".



More: TED spreading ideas

Amazing vision

A Swiss marine biologist and an Australian quantum physicist have found that a species of shrimp from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, can see a world invisible to all other animals.

Dr Sonja Kleinlogel and Professor Andrew White have shown that mantis shrimp not only have the ability to see colours from the ultraviolet through to the infrared, but have optimal polarisation vision -- a first for any animal and a capability that humanity has only achieved in the last decade using fast computer technology.

They can move each eye independently, they see the world in 11 or 12 primary colours as opposed to our humble three.

Most animals can tell how fast the electric field in a light wave is oscillating, which is perceived as colour. (Blue light oscillates faster than green, which is faster than red). The direction of the oscillation is known as polarisation.

The two scientists have shown that shrimp of the species Gonodactylus smithii have eyes that simultaneously measure four linear and two circular polarisations, enabling them to determine both the direction of the oscillation, as well as how polarised the light is.

Each eye measures the six polarisation components that are precisely required for optimal polarisation vision. In fact, the physics we used to understand what was going on is the same physics that we use in quantum computing for optimal storage of information."

Colleagues at The University of Queensland have recently found a related species where the males reflect circular polarisation from their bodies, and hypothesized that circular polarisation vision is used for sexual signalling.

Read more


Human perception limit (Updated 2013-01)
Only for humans. ...

Source: link

Protein folding software - for free

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

It will teach you:
* What is a protein?
* What are amino acids?
* Why is shape important?
* What do proteins do?
* Why is this game important?
* How does my game playing contribute to curing diseases?
* What other good stuff am I contributing to by playing?

Over the summer, they will add new functionality to the game to allow users to design brand new proteins that could help prevent or treat important diseases. Some say this "Could Earn The Nobel Prize In Medicine".

Chilirec: 300.000 songs in 5days

Chilirec is the latest Recorded to hit the internet. It is a Swedish "innovation" that lets you record a number of radio stations. I have tried the service for about 5days now and I have already recorded more than 300.000 songs. Even if the counter is wrong by a factor of x100, it is still amazing. All recorded song can be transfered to my desktop as MP3 files with a perfect id-tag.
If your still hesitate, have a look at this Demo video by Molly McDonnel over at Demogirl.com.

The attraction of art

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.
I wonder what it is that just makes something interesting.
What ever it is, this person succeeded.

Here is another interesting thing; 360desktop.

Google Motion chart

Google just announced a gadget gallery containing one gem for the business intelligence consultants. It's a motion chart, that is, an XY chart with a time dimension (feel free to play with it). The motion chart comes from Gapminder Trendalyzer.



To read the complete article, go here.

Multi Media players - TViX

I just bought this. The only drawbacks are 1) the internal fan is not as quiet as I would have like it to be. 2) I can't listen to music and up load music, at the same time. 3) It works flawlessly 98% of the time, but not 100%.

Here are a few other alternatives: 1

New way of fishing

Other videos.

Ferrofluid patterns

This is a Ferrofluid pattern. It is amazing what shapes can be made just by rotating a magnetic field. Some of the patterns makes you wounder if there is a life science link. Enjoy the movie. Here is another, more classical mystery. And another + Pool full of Corn starch - Walk on water.

Best place to live and work - A revolution

This mapping work from Department for Transport & mySociety is quite important because it provides a potentially revolutionary new way of working out the best place for people to live and work.
There are several different interactive maps that compares House prices to Travel time, Driving vs Public transport (in Edinburgh), and Bicycling vs Public transport.
This mapping will be made for all major cities, influencing how and where cities will grow.

US Election 2008 - Poll average

Democratic (above) and Republican (below) poll average.



Amendment
I just listened to an excellent speech on moral values by Obama. There are few other presidential candidates that I can see make the same speech, being bold and intelligent and in my belief so very right.

Virgin Galactic - an eye watering experience

This morning, Richard Branson’s spaceship startup Virgin Galactic unveiled the second design of its suborbital vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two. SpaceShipTwo is what the passengers will actually ride in, and White Knight Two is the launch vehicle that carries it to a high altitude before releasing the rocket.

On the initial $200,000 price per flight, Branson notes:
Within five years of launching, we hope that price will come down dramatically. We accept that $200,00, even though the dollar is not worth much anymore, is still too expensive for the majority of people.
By comparison, a trans-Atlantic flight in 1939 between New York and England cost the equivalent of $47,000 in today’s dollars. That was one-way and coach.

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report is a self measurement of Nicholas Feltons life.
"I began documenting my week equipped with the stopwatch on my mobile phone, a digital cooking scale, a set of daily survey sheets I made for the assignment, and the notepad application on my phone. "

The PRINT Magazine has made an interview with 4 people who all share the same type of obsessive curiosity. In the article The Obsessives, the four artists explain how they documented a week of consumption in their own visual medium. The Print magazine managing editor Emily Gordon asks about their work and the connection between consumer culture and their art.


So should this be call interesting or fun?

The most influencial Flashsite of the decade

2Advanced Studios have received the FWA award - the most influential flash site of the decade. The runner ups - like the 2006 award, In Sync Challenge - are worth viewing as well.
Every day the FWA posts a sites and then from them selects the Site Of The Month. Many of them are fun, interesting, or impressive. So be sure to have plenty of time before you start visiting them.

Interesting notes:
- 2Advanced Studio also features Neverrain on their v2. site. Their latest site V.5 makes heavy use of Flash Dynamic Deep Linking (DDL) and XML data cache to end the debate of the usability of Flash.
- Jeroen Wijering (I've used his free MP3 player on my site + the MappedUp news ticker) he has a good explaination of different Video compression formats on his site.
- ZamZar converts any format to any other format.
- Nice flash players from Flowplayer, imagevueX.com, discovered by the FlashGuru.
- Asual - Open software that pushes the limit
- Macromedia FlashPaper2: PDF and Flash merged

Actionscript 3.0: Use the mouse to change perspective:

OCR program

JOCR is a little program that can capture an image from any part of the desktop and perform optical character recognition (convert images to text) on the contents. It is free to download and use but it uses a resource provided with MS Office, and requires that Microsoft Office 2003 or higher be installed on the machine where it is used.

• Works remarkably well; OCR conversion is instant and the results are respectable (no OCR recognition is ever 100% accurate)
• Can clip any area or window on the desktop, or the entire desktop.
• Results are dumped into a notepad text file, where they can be edited and/or clipped.
• Does NOT require JAVA (despite the name).
• Extremely small footprint; very low on resources.
  

The recognizable languages by MODI and JOCR are, in the alphabetical order, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. Confirm your available language by executing "Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office Document Imaging" and selecting "Tools > Options > OCR tab > OCR Language"

I’ve been looking for a freeware OCR program that does exactly this sort of thing. The only drawback with this is the MS Excel requirement; otherwise it is a very simple, straightforward program that works well.

Source:freewaregenius

LiberTV

LiberTV is a local client software that can download or stream films, videos, and podcasts from online sources. It promises quality “high definition” videos updated daily that you can browse through by category using a well designed user interface. Some of the content looks very interesting.

I haven't tried LiberTV since it requires XP - but I will.
Source: freewaregenius

Social.FM

Social·fm Desktop formerly Mercora IMRadio is for the music connoisseur or aficionado who is into music discovery. Social·fm Desktop is the "universal tuner" that connects you to the world's largest and legal music radio network powered by people, dj's and artists just like you.

With Social·fm Desktop, you can search, find and listen to thousands of artists and hundreds of genres in near-CD quality sound from webcasters all over the world - you can never find such variety with other online services, AM, FM or even XM. Social·fm Desktop also allows you to legally time-shift authorized webcasts for listening at a later more convenient time or when you are disconnected from the Internet.

Social·fm Desktop mission is to catalogue and organize the world's music and make it universally searchable and legally listenable.
And did I say, Social·fm Desktop is free.

radio.blog.club

Radio.blog.club, if you haven’t heard of it, is a sort of YouTube for mp3’s. Users can join the community for free and upload songs. Like YouTube, there are literally thousands of songs uploaded in every conceivable genre/category.

Is it legal, you ask? It is if users upload non-copyrighted audio. Which is to say that it is legal in the same way YouTube is legal (it isn’t). Whether sites like this will eventually be shut down or will find a way to work together with the copyright holders is another story. For the time being it is there for all to use.

Link: How to download the songs

Flash Applications for Free

Flash-gear is a no name website that helps you add flash applications to you blog. If you want to add a poll to your blog. Here is a small flash application that can do the job.



Other sites not yet sorted:
FlashKit, Kirupa.com, flashmo.com, ffiles.com, Adobe,

Universities With the Best Free Online Courses

No tuition money? No problem! There are many top universities that offer free courses online. This list ranks some of the best free university courses for people who want to enhance personal knowledge or advance in their current field.

The universities with free cources include:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit.edu)

3. Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)

5. Stanford (stanford.edu)

6. University of California, Berkeley (berkeley.edu)

10. University of California, Irvine (uci.edu)

The complete list

2008 Thumb calendar

Adam Sporka is the designer of this compact 2008 Calendar. Weighting in at the size of a business card, the tiny Thumb Calendar makes it possible to keep a calendar on you at all times. The Thumb Calendar is two sided and in order to use it, you must cover the dates that are not directly below the month header with your thumbs.
The Thumb Calendar is a free download and makes a great addition to any purse or wallet.