FedEx's "Our Changing World" Website: Interactive Information Graphics (Cartograms) and Augmented Reality Holographs on the FedX

Following a link from Nathan Yau's recent Flowing Data blog post, Our Changing World in Cartograms, I discovered that FedEx's "Our Changing World" website.  It provides an interesting way to explore data about various countries by mousing over countries on a map.

I have an HP TouchSmart PC, and found that the touch-screen interaction offered by this website was better than using the mouse.   I'm pretty sure that this website would be fun to use on a larger touch-enabled display, and in in the classroom, on interactive whiteboards.

To my surprise, I also discovered that the website offers a 3D augmented reality version of "Our Changing World": Experience the changing world in augmented reality
"See the world and the information that shapes it.  Watch it come to life as a 3-D hologram..."

(I'll play with the AR hologram later today.)


Note: 
The FedEx website provides links to additional resources for each topic area, as well as a link to the sources used for the data included in the information graphics.  It is important to remember that graphics do not always accurately depict the numbers!


RELATED
FedEx Launches Global Business Data Visualization Experience

"At experience.fedex.com, visitors can interact through a world map with data and content provided by The Economist Intelligence Unit on eight world trends initially, including air travel, people in cities, entrepreneurs and success, paper trail, business growth, education, money and happiness, and research and development.  Visitors also have an opportunity to analyze the data, share information, or participate in real-time, online polls....“At FedEx, we pride ourselves on our ability to offer great customer experiences,” said Malcolm Sullivan, vice president, Marketing, FedEx Express Asia Pacific. “Experience.fedex.com is an effective way for us to extend these experiences to the virtual world.  By making visualizations of complex and important information available to people everywhere, FedEx makes it easy for anyone to learn about their world and share their discoveries with friends.”"

FedEx Data Sources
FedEx: Our Changing World


FedEx Multimedia Center

PRIVACY AND THE INTERNET: A HELPFUL VENN DIAGRAM via Flowing Data via buriednextoyou via We Love DataVis

via Flowing Data via buriednextoyou via WeLoveDataVis

SOMEWHAT RELATED

Flowing Data  (Nathan Yau)

Privacy and the Internet

Q. What schooling should I take to learn about visualization and data graphics?

Find your flight via visual interface

Buriednexttoyou (David Makes)

datavisualization.ch (curators of WeLoveDatavis)

Review: Processing for Visual Artists

Visualizing the 2010 Afghan Elections

Illustrating Information with Photography

WeLoveDatavis

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions (and a side trip of the color strata)

This is one of the books on my summer reading list.  I planned on buying this book last summer.  I got around to ordering it a few days ago, and today, it arrived in the mail.  


Nathan Yau,  the author of Flowing Data, was responsible for the first chapter, "Seeing Your Life in Data".   I'm a fan of the Flowing Data blog. Nathan shares quite a bit of interesting- and beautiful- information on his blog.  For example, his recent post, Strata of common and not so common colors, 





"The Color Strata includes the 200 most common color names (excluding black-white-grayish tones), organized by hue horizontally and relative usage vertically, stacked by overall popularity, shaded representatively, and labeled where possible. Besides filtering spam, ignoring cruft, normalizing grey to gray, and correcting the most egregious misspellings (here’s looking at you, fuchsia), the results are otherwise unadulterated."  - via Stephen, of Weather Sealed


After looking at all of the colors,  I followed Nathan's links and the links from his links (I love colorful rabbit holes!)... and found this graphic about the differences between girls and boys, from Doghouse Diaries, on the xkcd blog:

Egregious Citations Issued to BP, via Nathan Yau of Flowing Data (cross-post)

Interesting post with related data visualizations and a few comments:
Egregious Citations Issued to BP
Nathan Yau 6/6/10

SOMEWHAT RELATED
Flowing Data's Beginner's Guide -A Guided Tour

Cross-posted on The World Is My Interface

CNN's Interactive Map and Timeline of Iraq and Afghanistan Casualties "Home and Away"

Via Flowing Data and CNN

Nathan Yau, of Flowing Data, posted information and a link to CNN's interactive Casualties: Home and Away website. This website allows you to visually explore the casualty statistics of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, beginning with the first of the fallen in 2001. You can zoom into a region and see pictures and names of people.  The website provides a way for friends and family to share memories about their loved ones.

Home and Away also provides a "list view" option, shown in one of the pictures below.  Visitors to the site can sort by name or year of death.  Sliders on the map view provide a way of looking at the pattern of deaths over time.  It is sad, but this website makes us remember that war is real.  Deaths are not simply statistics.

CNN Afghanistan Crossroads Blog

Flowing Data
Home and Away

Beautiful Nature by Numbers by Cristobal Vila & Eterea Studios (via Infosthetics and Flowing Data)

Here is a video from Cristobal Vila, of Eterea Studios inspired by "numbers, geometry and nature":


Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.


RELATED
Images of the process of making Nature by Numbers

Facebook and Privacy Issues: Reflections about the ever-changing interfaces of Facebook and the growing number of Facebook-connected websites.....

I joined Facebook in 2007 when I was taking a graduate HCI-oriented course about privacy and security.  Heather Lipford, the professor,  and some of my classmates were working on a study about Facebook and privacy, so I agreed to participate as a subject.  What I quickly learned is that even graduate IT students can be puzzled about Facebook privacy settings. Facebook has made numerous changes to the way it handles privacy settings, and this has fueled research on this topic for the past few years (see links below).  


Too many "regular" folks are unknowingly sharing things they do not want to share with the world, and it is difficult for most of us, including myself, to keep up with these rapid changes.   For example,  last month I came across a video of Mark Zuckerburg (founder of Facebook), announcing Open Graph which is a way of making "connected, mapped web that is more "social, personalized, smarter, and semantically aware."  Zuckerburg's keynote presentation at the f8 conference was delivered on April 21st, yet on the day I posted about it, only a handful of people had viewed the video. 


As of this post, only about 731 people had viewed the presentation, yet the key points that were reviewed will impact how the information we provide Facebook is used, stored, and perhaps shared by third-party web-based applications.  With over 400,000,000 people on Facebook, this is an open invitation for those "in the know" to manipulate things in a way that many of us may not understand.  


In the video below, Zuckerburg mentions that Facebook's policy for applications integrated with Facebook prohibited the storage or caching of  data and information from the user for more than 24 hours. The rationale for the rule was to protect the privacy of Facebook users.  

At about 4:58 in the video, Zuckerburg discusses this policy, and announces that it has been changed. He then goes on to say, "We're going ahead and getting rid of this policy."  (5:09) This made the audience very happy (about 5:10):

Zucherburg introduces the "One Step Permission" feature that provides third-party websites a simple means for users who have Facebook accounts to connect with the site.  The hitch is that the user can't move forward and access what they'd like to access on the site unless they make the quick decision to give up quite a bit of their Facebook information. This will now give the  host application use of your information, which they now can store ...forever, I assume.


Here is a screenshot of the single permissions dialog from the video at about 4:16:

Zucherburg's words:
"Now, if a person comes to your site, and gives you permission to access their information, you can store it. That means no more having to make the same API calls day after day. No more having to build different code paths just to handle information that Facebook users are (unwittingly?) sharing with you. We think that this step is going to make building with Facebook platform a lot simpler." 



I knew there was a BIG problem with Facebook's privacy settings when Nathan Yau, author of the Flowing Data blog, tweeted about his discovery of information that Facebook somehow shared without his knowledge. Nathan's recent post, "Evolution of Facebook Privacy Policies", contains a interesting visualization, created by Matt McKeon of the Visual Communication Lab at IBM, that provides an interesting look at Facebook's privacy policies from 2005 on.


The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook (Interactive graphic with options for viewing an animation or an image-based version.)


The blue area represents the default settings regarding the availability of your personal data. As you can see, the default settings allow a large set of personal information to be shared among your Facebook connections as well as the outside world.  As a member of Facebook, you must manually change your settings to make sure you have your preferred level of privacy. Don't assume this is taken care of for you by the application!

RELATED

Five Hidden Dangers of Facebook: Security Expert on Big Risks You Should Be Aware You're Taking When You Use the Site (CBS News.com 5/8/10)

"Your information is being shared with third parties Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign Facebook ads may contain malware Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable Scammers are creating fake profiles "

Privacy bog causes Facebook to disable chat
Caroline McCarthy, CNET News 5/7/10
Video: Major Facebook Security Hole Lets You View Your Friends' Live Chats
Steve O'Hear, TechCrunch 5/5/2010

Nathan Yau and Flowing Data

f8 2010 Breakout Session Videos

Previous Post:  Mark Zuckerburg's Recent Keynote at f8: Facebook's OpenGraph

HCI Lab at UNC-Charlotte:

"At the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCILab) at UNC Charlotte, we investigate novel ways for people to interact with computers, and through computers with their environments. Our research covers a broad range of areas within Human Computer Interaction, such as Novel Interaction and Multimedia, Privacy, Creativity, and Visual Analytics. We collaborate with researchers in a number of areas related to HCI, such as visualization, gaming, art, and psychology. We also study interaction in a variety of domains such as intelligent information systems, information privacy and security, image processing and graphics, and intelligence analysis."

UNC-C's HCI Facebook Research Articles
Lipford, H. R., Besmer, A., and Watson, J. "Understanding Privacy Settings in Facebook with an Audience View." In the Proceedings of the USENIX Workshop on Usability,
Psychology, and Security (UPSEC 2008), April 14, 2008. pdf
Lipford, H.R.,  Hull,G.  Latulipe, C., Besmer,A.,  Watson, J. Visible Flows: Contexual Integrity and the Design of Privacy Mechanisms in Online Social Networking. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Security & Privacy in Online Social Networking, August 2009. pdf
Lipford, H.R., Watson, J., Whitney, M., Froiland, K., and Reeder, R.W. "Visual vs. Compact: A Comparison of Privacy Policy Interfaces. In Proceedings of CHI'10. Atlanta, Georgia, USA. April 2010. pdf
Strater, K., and Lipford, H.R. "Strategies and Struggles with Privacy in an Online Social Networking Community". In the Proceedings HCI 2008, Liverpool, UK. 2008. pdf
Watson, J., Whitney, M., and Lipford, H.R. "Configuring Audience-Oriented Privacy Policies." In the Proceedings of the Workshop on Assurable and Usable Security Configuration, ACM CCS, November 2009. (abstract)
SOMEWHAT RELATED
IBM's Visual Communication Lab is behind the Many Eyes website, which I used as a resource during when I was taking a course in information visualization and visual communication. At the time, I was looking at data related to the high-school drop-out problem in the US. I loved how the on-line Many Eyes application provided me with a variety of ways of looking at the data I had collected for my team's project. Since then, thousands of other people have utilized the Many Eyes website. Warning: If you are interested in data, stats, and information visualization, be prepared to spend a while exploring. It is an enticing rabbit hole!
Many Eyes: For Shared Visualization and Discovery

Cross-posted on The World Is My Interface

Flowing Data's Best Visualizations of 2009 (Nathan Yau): "It was a huge year for data"

"Data has been declared sexy, and the rise of the data scientist is here."  -Nathan Yau, Flowing Data
I started following Nathan Yau's Flowing Data blog nearly 2 years ago, when I was in Robert Kosara's information visualization/visual communication class at UNC-C.  What a great blog!  


Here is the short list- visit Flowing Data for the pics and details:
Honorable Mention:  MTV VMA Tweet Tracker
Honorable Mention:  Crisis of Credit Visualized (animation)
5.  Microsoft's Photosynth
4. New York Times' The Jobless Rate for People Like You
3. Open Street Map: A Year of Edits
2. Stanford University's  Protovis
1. Ben Fry's On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Traces


RELATED
Ben Fry's Origin of the Species: The Preservation of Favored Traces

Protovis
NYT's Jobless Rate for People Like You
Photosynth Website (Christmas lights featured on main page today 12/25/09  "Mintz Family Christmas")

Open Street Map
Crisis of Credit, Visualized
MTV MTA Tweet Tracker


SOMEWHAT RELATED
Dr. Kosara's EagerEyes site is a great resource to follow- I especially like his link to the History of Visual Communication website.
The Three Sexy Skills of Data Geeks (Michael E. Driscoll Dataspora Blog, 5/27/09)
Michael Driscoll's Book Recommendation:
The Elements of Statistical Learning:  Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Second Edition

Stanford University Viz Group


NOTICE
I'm gathering information about good examples of user-friendly multi-user interactive information visualization applications, preferably on multi-touch or gesture-based systems. Leave a comment and a link if you can point me in the right direction!

New Interactive Technology: Tag Galaxy, Windows 7, PaperVision 3D, Microsoft Surface, Touch Screens, and Blog Posts Revisited

Steven Wood's Tag Galaxy
Via Papervision3D, Richard Banks, and Flowing Data

Tag Galaxy is an application that uses Flickr and Papervision 3D. If you type in a tag, the tag is represented as the sun in the galaxy, and related tags are represented as planets. When you rotate and browse through the galaxy in 3D space, you can view the pictures according to the tag. Steven Wood created Tag Galaxy for his thesis project.

Separated at Birth?
Vacation pictures on an interactive photo-globe - April 2007

Just over a year ago, I finished some class projects that were designed for touch screens or tables. At the time, I had no idea that Microsoft was working on the Surface. I was determined that I'd make my own table if I couldn't get my hands on one, and even joined the NUI Group to learn more about the open-source DYI approach to satisfying my fascination with this interactive technology.


The first day I learned about Microsoft Surface will be etched in my memory forever...


It is not because I'm a 100% Microsoft fan. It is because I'd been thinking about touch-screen interaction since my first encounter with an interactive whiteboard several years ago. At the time, I was involved with group counseling with middle school students, seated around a table.

What would happen if we took the whiteboard put it on a table?

As noted below, the demo projects worked best on a NextWindow Human Touch. Although the large display was only "single-touch", it provided excellent resolution and touch response. Since then, NextWindow has come out with a multi-touch display, which I've had a chance to see. It is not a table, but it has possibilities.

What would happen if we took a NextWindow multi-touch display and mounted it onto an adjustible drafting board? It could be used as a vertical display, a "surface" table, and a drafting board. The best thing is that this could support quite a bit of collaborative work between two or more people, as well as learning, creative-artistic, and gaming activities.

New things are on the horizon. Windows 7, will replace Vista in the future. Bill Gates has pronounced that "every surface will be a computer". Touch screen surfaces are finding homes on tablet PC's, cell phones, and the latest OLPC "$100.00" laptops for children.

I think there will be more possibilities for using touch-screen technology for education in the very near future.

Here is my post about Microsoft's Surface from last year, with some updates:

Microsoft Surface multi touch screen table - I wish I had one for my projects last semester!

Microsoft Research recently unveiled Microsoft Surface: http://microsoft.com/surface. This multi - touch table can be used for a variety of applications, as outlined in the video from CNET and YouTube below:



I'd like to work on applications for use on a touch-table to support students with special needs, especially those who have autism spectrum disorders.

.....Last semester, I worked on prototype applications for use on a touch-screen surface -here is a photo. We used a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display, which provided great screen resolution and touch-response.



This application was part of a travel-planning prototype developed for a course in Human Computer Interaction. The application was demonstrated on a NextWindow Human Touch large screen display. Would it work on the iPhone?







Update: Examples from some of my other posts:

Below is another demo video-clip of a globe created in GoogleEarth using photo-overlays, with links to video clips that pop up on the screen. You can spin and rotate the globe at any size, and zoom into the pictures. The above photo and the video clip show the application on a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display.

This application would be great on a touch-table or touch-table set up on a drafting board. Although it was designed for a travel-planning application, it would work well in educational settings in subjects such as geography.


Poetry Picture Share

This was my first attempt at a "poetry picture share" application. It was designed for eventual use on a multi-touch table. It was developed using JavaScript and Ajax. It could be accessed remotely so people in different places can move things around on the screen. The video shows how the application works on a large interactive touch-screen display.

I am planning on adapting this application for use with students with special needs, such as those who have autism or other communication disorders. (Note: I've used it with several students, with success. It still is a work in progress!)



Update:

Link to Papervision 3D: Press the picture to enter a 3-D interactive underwater world...

If you have tried PaperVision 3D or Tag Galaxy on an interactive whiteboard or touch screen display, please leave a comment and share your impressions.