Tweets during the Super Bowl

The New York Times builds an information display of Twitter chatter during the Super Bowl.

This one was taken at halftime, obviously

Hat tip: Tarus

Travel Connectivity

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Update, 1 Feb 2009: Carrie analyzes the map at See What I Mean: Information Visualization.

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The world is shrinking. Cheap flights, large scale commercial shipping and expanding road networks all mean that we are better connected to everywhere else than ever before. But global travel and international trade and just two of the forces that have reshaped our world. A new map of Travel Time to Major Cities - developed by the European Commission and the World Bank - captures this connectivity and the concentration of economic activity and also highlights that there is little wilderness left. The map shows how accessible some parts of the world have become whilst other regions have remained isolated. Accessibility - whether it is to markets, schools, hospitals or water - is a precondition for the satisfaction of almost any economic need. Furthermore, accessibility is relevant at all levels, from local development to global trade and this map fills an important gap in our understanding of the spatial patterns of economic, physical and social connectivity.

Travel time to major cities: A global map of Accessibility (European Commission - Global Environment Monitoring) -- via Thomas P.M. Barnett

One of the most astonishing things I learned is how little wilderness is really left - only about 10% of the planet's surface is more than 48 hours travel time from a major city.

Fond memories of early experiments with hypertext

This one will really resonate with Mac users of a certain age -

Miss Hypercard? Try Tilestack.

Stacks can be published to Blogger, Facebook, Wordpress, and your (or somebody else's) iPhone, among other places.

I.O.U.S.A.

Last week I finally caught Patrick Creadon's documentary I.O.U.S.A., in which former comptroller general David Walker and former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson explain why the national debt is 1) so huge, 2) even more enormous than most people realize, 3) not going away anytime soon and 4) actually a threat to the continued viability of the US as a trading partner/solvent nation.

Sobering message notwithstanding, I found the film gripping—in large part because of Brian Oakes's remarkably clear and cogent data presentation throughout.

See What I Mean - Great Moments in Infoviz: I.O.U.S.A.

Information overload: it's official

We’ve hit information overload: The amount of data people create now exceeds the amount of space available to store them.

People sent emails, took digital pictures, processed credit cards and generally did things that collectively created 281 exabytes of data by the end 2007, according to the research company IDC. (“Exabyte” sounds made up, but it’s a real term meaning 1,000,000,000,000 megabytes.) IDC also added up all the computer drives, backup tapes, CDs, DVDs, memory sticks and other devices that store data and estimated that their total capacity is only 264 exabtyes.

There aren’t data just drifting in the ether somewhere. A lot of the data that get created—say, an Internet phone call–never get stored. Other data get erased or recorded over. It’s the digital equivalent of a conversation going in one ear and out the other. But for the first time in human history, we couldn’t save all this information if we wanted to, according to IDC.

It's Official: There's Too Much Information (Wall Street Journal Business Technology Blog)

A newsfeed for your block

Everyblock scrapes information from a bunch of different sources and gives you an aggregated newsfeed of what's going on around your house or apartment. It's currently available for Chicago, New York, and San Francisco:

We aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We're a geographic filter -- a "news feed" for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.

At this time, we cover three American cities: Chicago, New York and San Francisco. On each site, you can type in any address to read local news and public information near you. You'll find three main types of news:

• Civic information -- building permits, crimes, restaurant inspections and more. In many cases, this information is already on the Web but is buried in hard-to-find government databases. In other cases, this information has never been posted online, and we've forged relationships with governments to make it available.
• News articles and blog entries -- major newspapers, community weeklies, TV and radio news stations, local specialty publications and local blogs. We do the work of classifying articles by geography, so you can easily find the mainstream media coverage near particular locations.
• Fun from across the Web -- local photos posted to the Flickr photo-sharing site, user reviews of local businesses on Yelp, missed connections from Craigslist and more. We figure out the relevant places and point you to location-specific items you might not have known about.

Here's what's going on in my neck of the woods.

Everyblock

Bad Usability Calendar

My Norwegian friend Eidar just wrote to inform me that their company (Netlife Research) has finally released Bad Usability Calendar 2008. Last year, the calendar got quite popular and even Jakob Nielsen mentioned it in one of his newsletters.

This year, I’m more than ever looking forward to use it. The calendar has — as always — 12 brilliant examples of how not to build a calendar.

justaddwater.dk: Bad Usability Calendar 2008

The Bad Usability Calendar