ReadWriteWeb

Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Here are some of the best:

This morning Robert Scoble unveiled video of Microsoft's World Wide Telescope project in action. It's definitely worth watching (even if Scoble's camera work is as amateurish as ever), because though it didn't bring me to tears, it does look like a pretty amazing piece of software. The purpose of the software is to provide access to the world's collected astronomical data and put it in the hands of regular people. Similarly, the Visible Body, which launches tomorrow, aims to do the same for human physiology.

VisualComplexity.com is a site that intends to be a unified resource space for the visualization of complex networks. Their main goal is to better understand the different types of visualization methods used across several different disciplines, including social networks and the World Wide Web. Although this site is not new, with all the discussion around the idea of a "social graph," it's a good time to revisit what VisualComplexity has to offer. With the social graph, we're attempting to map everyone to everyone and show how they are connected. This is no minor undertaking.

Last.fm, one of the web's most popular recommendation and web radio services, provides their recommendations based on what "people like you" enjoy. This brings a social aspect to their system where friendships have an impact what people listen to. But what do these friendships look like? Are they localized groups having little contact with other users? Or do they actually span across the network of last.fm users?

One of the categories at next week's Crunchies awards show, which ReadWriteWeb is co-hosting, is Best technology innovation / achievement. The 5 finalists in that category are: Earthmine, Like, Move Networks, Twine, Viewdle. Here's a look at what each of these startups does and what makes them "innovative".

Among the 5 finalists, there is 1 Semantic App, 2 Visual Search Engines, a 3D mapping service, and an Internet video streaming product. Tell us who you think should be the winner in the comments.

Some people say that the bubble's going to take a downturn in the next year or two - that huge numbers of copycat startups are going to shut down, people are going to be out of work and Web 2.0 cheerleaders are going to eat their (our) words.

While startup churn is inevitable in any industry (thank goodness we're not restaurant founders!) I think this forecast is selling the future short. There are some big trends I'm really excited about for the web in 2008. Whatever happens to the economy, there's at least a whole lot of innovation to be inspired by right now. Ultimately, I think that will end up brightening the picture for all of us around the world.

Let's Build Some Stuff

For each of the 5 big topical trends described below, I've assembled some resources I think will be useful for anyone who wants to keep up with cutting edge developments in these fields in the next year.