Best of the visualisation web… April 2011

At the end of each month I pull together a collection of links to some of the most relevant, interesting or thought-provoking articles I’ve come across during the previous month. If you follow me on

Twitter you will see many of these items tweeted as soon as I find them. Here’s the latest collection from April 2011:

NYT Labs | Project Cascade is a firt of its kind tool to analyse the structures which underly sharing activity on the web, initially applied to NYT content.

FastCo Design | More detail on Project Cascade

Computerworld | 22 free tools for data visualization and analysis

Declan Butler | A population density map to help provide context to a nuclear power plant proximity analysis

Clearly and Simply | An Underrated Chart Type: The Band Chart

Edward Tufte | The work of Charles Joseph Minard

Typographic Maps | Typographic Maps accurately depict the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing but type

Flowing Data | Beauty of Maps available in its entirety

Perceptual Edge | Teradata, David McCandless, and yet another detour for analytics

Flowing Data | Business intelligence vs. infotainment – the most commented, debated and generally talked about visualisation theory issue of the year so far

Fell in Love With Data | Can visualization influence people? I mean can we prove it? – arguably the second most discussed theoretical matter of the year!

Infosthetics | Can we keep up? A physical data visualisation using sponges and water

Online Journalism Blog | Data for journalists: JSON for beginners

Online Journalism Blog | Data for journalists: understanding XML and RSS

Guardian Data Blog | Data journalism broken down: what we do to the data before you see it

Information Management | Interesting pair of articles about data science – Part 1 and Part 2

Infosthetics | Data visualization survival kit: Creating visualizations in the wild

Deutsche Welle | Data visualizations emerge across newsrooms, online publishers

NYT Learning Network | Data Visualized: More on teaching with infographics

Density Design | EXPO 2015 Themes Visualization

NYT Business Day | When the data struts its stuff

Data Pointed | Growth Rings – Maps Of U.S. Population Change, 2000-2010

Poynter | How to make a heat map in Google Fusion Tables

CNN | Fernando Viegas and Martin Wattenberg article ‘How to make data look sexy’

Infosthetics | HyperCities: Overlaying the Historical Maps of a City

Creative Bits | If logos could tell the truth

In Graphics | In Graphics – the magazine for visual people

Rohit Bhargava | The 5 models Of content curation

Carlacasilli’s media psychology | Excellent series of posts about information visualisation, a new visual language: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7

Intersect | Capture experiences in time and place and connect to people who cross your path — past, present, and future

NYT Personal Tech | Illustrating your life in graphs and charts

Max Gadney | Solution in search of a problem

Datavis.ca | Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistical graphics and data visualsiation

Pete Warden | Data Science Toolkit 0.35 released

Title | Pete Warden’s application to map the information your iPhone records about your movements

DataVisualization.ch | Review of the SEE#6 Conference

SEE#6 | Video stream of the SEE#6 Conference presentations/talks

CNN | Software brings Johnny Cash back to life

Perceptual Edge | The Chartjunk Debate: A Close Examination of Recent Findings

Wired | Tilt-shifted ski resort delivers thrills in miniature

Neoformix | Tweet Topic Explorer

Core 77 | Visuaklize time in color form with ZIIIRO’s new wristwatch designs

Drawar | What is Design?

Flowing Data | When charts attack

Epic Graphic | When function trumps form in infographics

Peltier Tech Blog | Why do we love pie charts?

UX Matters | Why great designers steal—and are proud of it

Visual Journalism | The death of data visualization in the news

Epic Graphic | 21 everyday visualisations

O’Reilly Radar | Maps aren’t easy – Pete Warden on digital map creation and data journalism tools.

Eye Magazine | Mapping it up – Embrace the inner cartographer of artists and graphic designers

Wired | Wikimedia Commons celebrates 10 million free files