Spam Visualization [spamvisualization.net] contains a small collection of beautifully stylized data visualizations based on the data retrieved from the Spam Catalog Database.

The available data visualization techniques include a Bubble Size Quantity Grid (sorted by date, size or IP number), a Word Frequency Graph (sorted by count, alphabet or length), a Top Level Pie Chart (the circles show the ratio of the toplevel domain endings in emails and link URLs), some IP Number Glyphs, and a Time Frequency Bar Graph (shows the spam income of the last seven days, with color depending on the amount per hour.).

More visuals are available at Flickr. Thnkx Kim.

Solar System Scale Model [phrenopolis.com] shows a scale model of the solar system. The planets are displayed in a scale corresponding to the first image, which is that of the sun. Unlike most solar system visualizations or models, the planets are shown at their true-to-scale average distances from the Sun. That makes the resulting web page rather large: on an ordinary 72 dpi monitor it is just over half a mile wide (~800m), making it possibly one of the "largest" pages on the web. As a consequence, visitors must scroll a considerable amount in order to find the planets, which is part of the fun.

Strongly reminds me of World Population One and Hydrogen Atom Pixel Model. Via @ datamarket.

The World's Biggest / Largest / Longest Multi-Touch (and evidently Multi-User) Wall [sensory-minds.com, click Projects then choose 19.07.2009) seems to be installed in Nürburgring, a famous motorsport race track around the village of Nürburg, Germany The two-piece wall consists of a huge LED media facade (at the top), and a multitouch information-wall (at the bottom), and impresses by its physical size, as it totals a surface of about 425 square meters, equaling more than 6000 computer displays.

The interactive interface emerges out of 34 million pixels generated by 15 high definition projectors, supported by sound produced by 30 directional speakers. The multitouch capturing itself is based on laser technology, also called Laser Light Plane Illumination (LLP). This means more than 80 users can simultaneously get informed about news and activities around the ringworld. Now imagine the sorts of sparklines this device could display...

You can watch a documentary movie below.

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Tomorrow's Weather [bigertbergstrom.com] is a 8 storeys high (~37m) data sculpture which extends 2 arches made up of over 60 molecular globes, forming a double helix. The globes change color depending on tomorrow's weather forecast so that the interior landscape of structured lights take form as a "premonition of tomorrow". Tomorrow's Weather combines modern technology with one of nature's most basic expressions, the weather, so that its elaborate visual expression changes forever, capturing the volatile nature of climate and the future.

Reminds me of The Source, Electric Moons and Plastic Trade. Via Seed Media Group Blog.

Want to participate in a competition worth almost US$1000? Read on!

There has been a lot of discussion about the concept of information aesthetics lately, mostly focusing on the seemingly rapid rise of misplaced attention to "pretty, flashy mash-ups of something or other", in the press and on some (hmm hmm) online media. Despite these disagreements, I do hope we can all agree on some sort of visualization spectrum, with on one side the functional, expert-geared field of "information visualization", and on the other, that of the intriguing, visually persuasive "data art". I personally do believe we should not focus on defining such a hard divide, as there already exists an overlapping subfield in between where all the exciting things currently happen. Potentially, and maybe egoistically, I would propose this subfield could be labeled with the name of this blog. However, for the purpose of this competition, this issue is not even of much relevance.

While we keep discussing the necessity of theoretical frameworks, start dozens of vizblogs with endless "best-of" lists, and criticize the best practice of data visualizations, we seem to have lost the attention to a parallel universe, which no-one really recognizes the need to write a manifesto for. A field that is potentially more prevalent than all visualization "tools" and "artwork" put together. I mean those data visualizations that are neither "eye candy" nor "useful", neither "beautiful" nor "functional", neither "art" nor a "tool", neither "user-satisfactory" nor "effective", and neither stimulating the "heart" nor the "brain". The challenge of this competition is thus for you to find the most "ugly", "useless" and "disfunctional" data visualization online. It sounds easy, but can be more difficult than you might think.

Courtesy of our long-term sponsor FusionCharts, the 2 winners will each receive a FusionCharts Developer Bundle, worth US$499. Fusioncharts specializes in interactive Flash charts, gauges and maps, and is used by companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Dell, HP, GE, and many more. The Developer bundle comprises one license each of FusionCharts (animated Flash charts for web apps), FusionWidgets (data visualization widgets for dashboards), PowerCharts (interactive charts for specialized domains) and FusionMaps (interactive online maps).

You can participate by sending an email to ugly at infosthetics.com. The email should include a 600x600px .jpg image of the respective visualization, a direct link to the webpage containing the visualization, a title and short description (100-word max), and your name and email address (which will not be posted). Entries should be received before Wednesday 2 December, 12am (CET). The jury consists of FusionCharts staff and infosthetics. Any questions can be asked below.

Please note submissions proposing the complete collection of past infosthetics posts are permitted, but not really encouraged.

Images above were sourced from Many Eyes and Worst Visualization Gallery. Sorry, could not help picking 2 beautiful ones, negating my own rules... Further inspiration includes The Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics and The Pentagon Information Graphics Machine.

dataMorphose [christianekeller.de] is a series of amazingly beautiful and sophisticated physical data sculptures which represent information by the shape and motion of sail-like tensile structures.

Each triangular canvas represents a separate data object. Its data values are conveyed by the tension of the canvas, which in turn determines its size, movement and position in space. One vertex of each canvas is attached to the ground floor of a transparent cube, so that each canvas can receive its meaning through the projection of words and numbers onto that area. In all, this means the user is required to learn the visual language in order to understand the visualization, which is claimed to be intuitive to learn.

One sculpture visualizes the current time. The hours, minutes and seconds are assigned to one sail respectively. To represent the hours, the central canvas changes its position in space. The other two sails visualize the values from 0 - 59 by changing their shape: one vertex moves along the vertical edge of the cube: the downward movement shows the values from 0 - 29, the upward movement the values from 30 - 59. The second sculpture conveys web traffic data through the motion of 4 sails: the faster a canvas moves the higher the activity of the website or the search term. The last sculpture shows statistical information by a succession of 5 sails.

Technically, nylon threads are attached on the vertices of the canvas, which lead down into the base and are moved by servo motors according to the data values. You can watch them move in the documentation video below.

Reminded me of Level Green and Pulsating Emotion Visualization Organism.

"The Cost of Getting Sick" [ge.com] is a a new data visualization tool developed in collaboration with Ben Fry, Director of Seed Visualization. It enables the exploration of some the 6 million patient records currently stored in GE's proprietary electronic medical records database.

The online interactive tool allows users to slide a bar to select one's age and then select parts of the pie chart in order to investigate a more complete picture of the actual costs associated with a wide range of chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, depression, and hypertension.

A short, slick interview with Ben Fry regarding GE's two recent data visualizations can be watched below.

See also Visualizing the Major Health Issues Facing Americans Today and On the Origin of Species.

Google Image Swirl [googlelabs.com] is an experimental feature in Google Labs which is based on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a visual, exploratory interface.

For example, for an "apple" query, images of the fruit appears next to many products or logos of Macintosh. Users can then click on any thumbnail and a cluster of images will "swirl" into view. Other examples include keywords like car or Eiffel tower.

Via The Official Google Blog and Thnkx Andrew!

See also Google Wonder Wheel, Google Similar Images, Google Fusion, Google Timeline and Google Query Visualization Graphs.

The web portal Marshall IDX [marshallindex.com] tracks the historical popularity of words used by several thousand media sources, from months to just down to seconds ago. It aims to go beyond counting search queries to bring more transparency and understanding of the impact of news, advertisement, trends, and terms to its users.

The so-called "Marshall Index" is expressed by a number: 1 point represents 1 million individuals that got in touch with a particular term in a 24 hours time window. For example, if one searches for the word 'Olympics', the service will calculate an index based on how often the word is mentioned right now in online media. Via the Marshall Index it is also possible to observe words and watch their development in the media over a particular time period, from years down to seconds. By providing charts of the Marshall Index, the tool becomes interesting for many types of comparative studies like investment, medicine, music, movies, politics, and many other fields.

Users can create your own word lists in order to measure and illustrate their relativy popularity, check them against other words or benchmarks, or just explore an understanding of how word popularity fluctuates over time. Examples include the words Facebook or Facebook versus Twitter, or Obama or Obama versus Sarah Palin, while existing lists rank the popularity of movie stars and Head of States.

Marshall IDX is different from seemingly similar and well-known concepts such as Google Trends, as what people search for online, does not necessarily match with what is really popular.

See also Text Trends.

The graph Acquisition Security Related Policies & Issuances Chart (acq.osd.mil, PDF version) by the Office of the Director, Defence Research and Engineering is meant to increase the awareness of existing policies, in order to improve compliance, and to get policymakers to reflect about writing "one more policy" now that they are able to observe the huge existing "heap" they actually contribute to. The chart's designers are interested in your constructive feedback to make it better (and maybe help your country at the same time?).

The chart organizes acquisition security policies and guidance by purpose and the responsible offices. It shows all policies a typical acquisition program may need to comply with, and links them directly to the appropriate texts. The bins or categories for the policies emerged during the creation process itself: some policies clearly spanned multiple bins, and were placed appropriately, by overlapping across multiple bins.

The creators of the graph (3 people who worked over a period of more than 3 months) claim they have gotten positive feedback from the "operational crowd", that is the people who actually "use" this to do their work. The target audiences are DoD "acquisition program managers" and "security people" who are responsible for complying with these policies, and DoD "acquisition security policy makers" who contribute to this rich policy universe.

The chart was designed in Microsoft Visio, which enabled including hyperlinks from policy boxes to their full texts, making the graph interactive and more "than just wall art". In the future, they like to make the chart more interactive such that users could tick certain criteria and only the relevant policies would stay visible.

Any ideas for improvement?