Wordle Goes Mainstream

A century of most popular baby names - top 50 by decade

Yesterday's post commented on Fast Company's recognition of the importance of visualization skills. In their commentary, FC posted screenshots and video of word-images created with Wordle.

These Rorchschach-like wordmaps are fun, easy and effective to create with this (free) java-based web service. Many websites (including ours) now use the resulting images as navigation, sitemaps or splash screens. The Wordles give the viewer an instant impression of themes and importance ideas through font size and color.

I was blown away to see a Wordle used on the front page of USA Today as a feature article--not on the tool or on data visualization, but used as a graphic to illustrate the shifting trend in baby names!

Fast Company: Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?

The Tokyo firm Information Architects created this Web Trend Map which presents the most popular Internet sites in the intelligible graphic language of a subway system.

It is great to see that Fast Company is catching the visualization religion.

This post mentions the Obama speech Wordles, Tufte's screed against PowerPoint, and blogs that cover visual complexity (including the blog, Visual Complexity. 

Visualization may play a big role in wising up consumers. In the future, we're told, sensors will pick up tiny bits of info on every aspect of our lives and they will be played back to us as graphics. The smart grid, for example, will read the energy use in your home and send back understandable displays suggesting how you might save money by, say, waiting an hour to turn on your air conditioner or reducing your thermostat by two degrees. It will be up to architects to imbed this feature in the home in a way that allows us to interact more efficiently with our surroundings.

It's good to know, however, that Alphachimp Studio is on the frontier of design! 

Check out more Obama visualizations not mentioned by Fast Company (bastages) at The Center for Graphic Facilitation:

• Brandy Agerbeck
• Steph Crowley
• Diane Durand
• Other Visualization Tools

Online Meeting Tools That Facilitate Collaboration

 A Sliver of the On-line Collaboration Ecosystem

With travel budgets slashed, fuel prices on the rise again, airport horror stories, summer storms,... who wants to travel for a meeting?

Along with Joe Sterling, we at Alphachimp have been developing Remote Graphic Capture to enable graphic recording via on-line collaborative tools. This article compares 17 best-in-class tools for virtual meetings.

Online conferencing tools are used for many reasons – sales presentations, webinars and training, to name a few. Plus, if you work from home, like many freelancers and small business owners do, you face the unique challenge of needing live meeting time with clients who may be located around the world.

There are many online meeting tools out there that offer a variety of features at varying costs. Here are a few tools you may want to consider, some of their notable features and the cost for using them.

Let us know what you have found useful in dodging the airport blues while experiencing quality collaboration with peers. Or (shameless plug) schedule a demo of RGC today!

Update on 2009-05-20 15:28 by Alphachimp

Face time is crucial to morale and productivity

by Susan Pinker from Globe and Mail on why physical distance still matters in the age of the internet. 
(via Twitter @valdiskrebs  @barrywellman)| May 20, 2009

Chimps & Humans & DNA - What makes us human?

JAMES BALOG GETTY IMAGES

From the May 2009 Scientific American Magazine:

Comparisons of the genomes of humans and chimpanzees are revealing those rare stretches of DNA that are ours alone

The 1 percent difference: Humans are distinct from chimpanzees in a number of important respects, despite sharing nearly 99 percent of their DNA. New analyses are revealing which parts of the genome set our species apart. continue reading

Also check out:

• Morality: Your Inner Chimp
• Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History
• Rearranging the Human Family Tree

Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas

From Allison Arieff's blog By Design at New York Times on-line (thanks to @lumpysnake!):

Every worker would appreciate Steven M. Johnson's Nod Office (1984), an ingenious desk that can be transformed into a hidden sleeping chamber, perfect for late afternoon naps. Owning such a contraption remains for me a significant yet unrealized career goal.

Johnson is the author of an illustrated 1984 book: “What the World Needs Now: A Resource Book for Daydreamers, Frustrated Inventors, Cranks, Efficiency Experts, Utopians, Gadgeteers, Tinkerers, and Just About Everybody Else.”

Amen, brother!

See more brilliantly perverse inventions posted in Allison's article: Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas

The Font Conference: 2 Good 2 B 4GOTTEN! (Go Wingdings!)

via silverberry.org

Watch Font Conference on CollegeHumor

Preparing for Pandemics: Resources from PopTech & Sterling Insights

From Pop!Tech:

October 25, 2008: Laurie Garrett shares her proposal for a change in global health policy, and accompanying shifts in foreign policy and perception by countries like the US. photography by kris krüg Renowned global health expert Laurie Garrett gave a powerful and frightening talk at PopTech 2008 on how countries deal - both effectively and ineffectively - with pandemics. Examining China's response to SARS, she asked: what if this happened here? How would we respond? Her presentation is essential viewing right now:

http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/popcasts.aspx?lang=&viewcastid=227

Yesterday, just in time for the World Health Organization to raise the threat level from a 3 to a 4 (on a 6-point scale), Laurie gave a wide-ranging press teleconference on Swine Flu. We've summarized some of her high-level questions and answers on our blog:

http://www.poptech.org/blog/index.php/archives/3356

Finally, 2008 PopTech Fellow Erik Hersman (http://twitter.com/whiteafrican) wrote a terrific piece on information patterns that emerge during an emergency on social networking platforms (like Twitter), and how these can be aggregated and turned into real-time maps that shape a strategy for intervention:

http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2009/04/27/information-patterns-and-thoughts-on-swine-flu/

The above represent just the kind of clear thinking we may yet need in this circumstance. Have a look, and if you feel moved to do so, please help us share these insights by forwarding, blogging, and tweeting the above to friends and colleagues.

From Joe & Rita Sterling of Sterling Insights:

It’s been three years since our last pandemic readiness workbook update: Preparing for Pandemic – Family and Neighborhood Readiness Workbook. The Avian Flu has continued to smolder in Asia, Africa and parts of the Middle East only a few new human cases emerged. However, other strains of influenza have continued to mutate, including the new Swine Flu which is in the news today.

You can download a complimentary copy of our updated readiness workbook from our website: http://www.sterlinginsights.com/articles/pandemic_flu_20090501_dnld.pdf

Or you can order a paperback version: http://www.lulu.com/content/263485

Update on 2009-05-01 18:05 by Alphachimp

From Joe Sterling:

http://www.wpxi.com/video/19313969/index.html

Here’s a great flu explanation on video by Henry Niman, Ph.D. founder of Recombinomics, a research firm focused on genetic evolution of infectious diseases. http://www.recombinomics.com/whats_new.html

I’ve been tracking Niman since 2005 and he is always a bit ahead of everyone else and tells it like it is.

Joe

12 Brain-Mind Principles - Geoffrey & Renata Caine

From Diane Durand:

How do we learn? How do we make connections? T

hese are questions I have wondered for many years. I spent the early part of my career trying to understand and enhance how adults learn as individuals and groups. Now I am raising two children ages one and five. The five-year-old has made incredible connections in her brain between colors, science, play, and reading.

Now as I work with a new little one, I am trying to remember: "What did I do with her older sister to help her learn?"

Life and learning is incredible. 

I came across the model above, which I drew several years ago from some material Peter had brought back from a conference. At this particular conference he had the pleasure to meet Geoffrey and Renata Caine authors of 12 Mind/Brain Principles. 

I loved the principles right away.  I then created the image above to help me. (I learn best with a pen in hand.)

I Don't Know You - Lisa Hannigan

I Don't Know from ATO Records on Vimeo.

A wonderful music video.

Lisa Hannigan's video for "I Don't Know" from her album "Sea Sew" on ATO Records. 
Producer: Shirley Weir
Director: Frank Reid
Editor: Shirley Weir
Designer: Maeve Clancy

http://vimeo.com/3823991

New Service: Remote Graphic Capture

RGC works like a videoconference or screencast.

Ever wanted really dynamic visual experience to your meeting or workshop or conference call? Have you considered hiring a graphic recorder but the budget, space allocation, or logistical constraints just do work?

RGC provides quality graphic capture simultaneously in multiple venues,but without the expense, carbon footprint or requirement of bringing in scribe talent and a finished product that can be distributed in near real-time. Want to learn more? 

Contact us to schedule a demo. Learn more>>

Art, Art I Want You

For all of your artists or artistic types wondering if what you make, makes a difference. You are not alone.

Music video for Tanya Davis' song Art by Andrea Dorfman.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. --Carl G. Jung

(PS. Thanks to Nellie Durand for the link. Nellie makes LOTS of art. Check it out: http://nelliedurand.blogspot.com/)

Primates on Facebook

IMAGE: http://carrollina.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

What is the cost of emotion, time and energy do you spend in your social networks “grooming”?

From Feb 26th 2009 | SAN FRANCISCO | The Economist print edition

Even online, the neocortex is the limit That Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks will increase the size of human social groups is an obvious hypothesis, given that they reduce a lot of the friction and cost involved in keeping in touch with other people. Once you join and gather your “friends” online, you can share in their lives as recorded by photographs, “status updates” and other titbits, and, with your permission, they can share in yours. Additional friends are free, so why not say the more the merrier?

In the wild, grooming is time-consuming and here computerisation certainly helps. But keeping track of who to groom—and why—demands quite a bit of mental computation.

See original article:

Primates on Facebook

In Blindness, a Bold New Artistic Vision

Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

STILL PAINTING John Bramblitt, an artist, became completely blind in 2001. “It wasn’t until I lost my sight that I became brave enough to fail,” he said.

From NYTimes.com - Determined to get his vision back in some way, Mr. Bramblitt picked up a bottle of white glue and began to draw outlines that he could feel with his fingers once the glue dried. He soon switched to a paint product that dried more quickly, and he learned to distinguish between different shades of oil paint based on their texture and viscosity.

Alphachimp @ Pop!Tech

Peter Durand from Alphachimp @ Pop!Tech from Poptech on Vimeo. Peter Durand from Alphachimp illustrates Stephen Badylak's lecture on regenerative medicine. From Pop!Tech Blogger Michelle Riggen-Ransom:

If you’re with us in Maine, you’ve probably noticed the colorful illustrations hanging on the walls of the third floor break room. If you’re not, you can take a look at them here.

These illustrations are the work of artist Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio. Peter has set up an easel on the balcony of the Opera House, where he busily creates illustrations that capture the key elements of each presentation.

Peter let me peek over his shoulder while he illustrated a session. It happened to be Stephen Badylak’s talk on The Edge of Medicine. While images of exploded horse faces and dismembered fingers flashed on the screen, Peter managed to turn Badylak’s fascinating lecture on regenerative medicine into the illustration above. Watch a short video of his process here and see how language becomes visual art.

Storytelling and the Collective Mind

Storytelling is a human universal, and common themes appear in tales throughout history and all over the the world. These characteristics of stories, and our natural affinity toward them, reveal clues about our evolutionary history and the roots of emotion and empathy in the mind. By studying narrative’s power to influence beliefs, researchers are discovering how we analyze information and accept new ideas. More at SciAm.com