It's a fun site to use. Basketball, football and NASCAR are supported initially - hopefully baseball and hockey will be next. There's OpenID integration, the image selection is really nice and it's just great. It's still a little rough around the edges but given that the service just launched today - we're impressed. This is the kind of democratized data visualization that any field could benefit from with enough open data and a good user interface.

The Adobe Flash charts that StatPlot produces are even nicer, but they aren't easy to scale down to the size I needed.

The whole StatSheet franchise is an interesting one to watch. See TechCrunch's recent coverage of the company's tussle with Twitter over innovation on that platform.

Bring on the huge data sets and easy charting interfaces! We'd love to see a little of that action over at Data.gov, for example. Heck, let's see these kinds of options put on top of the forthcoming ClearSpring API tracking hundreds of millions of peoples' sharing activities online.

As StatSheet said on its blog today: "There are other services (Swivel, iCharts.net, Many-Eyes) that allow you to upload data and create a variety of visualizations, but these all suffer from the same issue. The average sports fan does not have access to quality sports stats to upload. With StatPlot, you don't need to bring your own data because you can use the expansive StatSheet database!"

It's not just sports fans that could use a hand with data sets. We all could. Thanks for leading the way in truly democratizing data visualization, StatSheet.

The folks at Thinkmap (the makers of Visual Thesaurus) have just launched a tool called VocabGrabber that is absolutely as cool to play with, as it is informative and useful. It takes any text a user chooses (it can process an obscene amount of copy - up to 200,000 characters, or about 100 pages) and parses it for likely vocabulary words, organizing them in several fascinating ways and showing linguistic and contextual links to other terms.

Here's a taste of how VocabGrabber handled the famous "Once more unto the breach" soliloquy from Shakespeare's Henry V, showing all identified vocabulary words, sorted by relevance in a list, with icons denoting the nature of the word and visuals linking it to similar words, all with definitions and uses in the text itself:

Next, just for fun, we threw the entirety of Plato's Symposium into the text entry field and checked out how all the vocabulary words looked in a color-coded tag cloud:

Then, we decided to separate vocabulary about people, social studies, and the arts. We wanted to see linguistic maps of the words as thumbnails, and we wanted the words sorted alphabetically:

Finally, we wanted to see the same results as a list sorted by number of occurrences within the text:

Also, any vocabulary words can be mapped using the Visual Thesaurus, which is available on a limited trial or a rather affordable subscription basis:

Obviously, this is a great tool for ESL learners, for English teachers at certain grade levels, for standardized-test takers, and for students at any level who struggle with comprehension of dense text material. VocabGrabber also seems like a nice way to keep one's offspring from rotting in front of a television.

Additionally, it might be a fun way to spend a few minutes that you, the non-learning adult netizen, would have otherwise donated to the ICanHasCheezburger franchise. Plus, it probably looks a bit more convincingly work-related on your cubicle computer screen than does a wittily captioned photo of a cat with a lime-rind helmet.

Connect to Salesforce.com - More Enterprise Features Coming Soon

Business users will be happy to hear that RoamBi already connects to Salesforce.com, though the company plans to release a full-blown paid version of the service and the RoamBi server, which can be hosted behind a company's firewall, in about three months.

In many ways, the current version of the app is only a preview of the full functionality that RoamBi will give to enterprise customers who will be able to license the service's server.

Part I: Publisher

The iPhone app and the Publisher work hand in hand. The publishing application allows users to upload files or import them from Salesforce.com, decide which view to choose for a specific spreadsheet, modify which tables and columns to display in the new spreadsheet, and then publish the edits to the iPhone.

However, once these files are uploaded and published, we couldn't quite figure out if it was also possible to manage these documents (and unpublish them, for example), from the web app. It looks like this functionality is only available from the phone.

Part II: iPhone App

This isn't really something we expected we would say when we received RoamBi's PR pitch, but the application really makes spreadsheets sexy. While the absence of any editing mode might limit its functionality a bit more than we would have hoped, we have yet to see an app on a mobile device that can do what RoamBi can, and RoamBi's designers clearly know what they are doing.

We could describe the different views that RoamBi uses to visualize data in detail, but the best way to get a good feel for the functionality of the app is through the iPhone simulator on RoamBi's homepage.

The mobile app is extremely intuitive and manages to transform large spreadsheets, which are usually pretty unmanageable on a small screen, and turns them into small mini-apps which don't just look good, but also work just as you expect them to. The design makes good use of the phone's touch screen, and while some of the views look deceptively simple, the intuitive interface allows you to easily drill deeper into the data.

Give it a Try

For now, RoamBi is only available on the iPhone, and when we talked to the RoamBi team last week, they told us that they were watching the mobile market carefully, but that the iPhone currently offered the best experience for the kind of app that RoamBi wanted to develop. Given that about 80% of the RoamBi code was developed for the publisher and the server, though, the company should be able to release apps for more platforms relatively quickly.

Of course, in a perfect world, RoamBi would be part of an iPhone office suite, where users could not just view data, but also edit it in a similarly elegant user interface, but for now, RoamBi turns accessing spreadsheets on the go into a completely new and surprisingly pleasant experience, and we can only assume that its paid offering will find a lot of thankful users once it is released in a few months.

The software, Glasshouse by Green Phosphor, lets you take data from either a spreadsheet or database query and place a 3D representation of it into a virtual world environment where it can then be explored interactively. Users are inserted into the virtual world as an avatar which can then manipulate the visualization of the data by drilling down into it, re-sorting it, or even just spinning it around to see it from all angles.

The benefits to working with data in this way don't really need to be touted too much - many businesses already perform data visualization, often using expensive software and powerful computers to do so. What makes what Green Phosphor does so interesting is not that they've come up with a way to visualize data - it's that they've come up with a way to leverage the platforms of virtual worlds to do so.

How it Works: CICP (Think HTTP for Virtual Worlds)

Some of the company's solutions involve using a proprietary virtual world, "Glasshouse," for data visualization, but for Second Life, Sun's Wonderland, and other virtual world users, they've developed adapters that project graphs from Glasshouse into whichever virtual world you're using. The only requirement is that the virtual world be CICP-enabled.

CICP, or Content Injection and Control Protocol, was developed in-house by Green Phosphor CEO Ben Linquist and released to the public domain. The standard, cross-platform protocol essentially serves as HTTP for virtual worlds where it works as a communication mechanism that the Glasshouse gateway can use to generate temporary artifacts in the worlds. Already it has been added to Sun Wonderland and released under the GPL license there. It has also been implemented in Second Life with the help of a Java servlet and released under a BSD license. The company is currently working to add it to other virtual worlds, too.

Data Viz for Anyone: From Spreadsheets to Biotech

Depending on company size, there are three different levels of service available. First, a spreadsheet world lets you upload Excel spreadsheets that can then be visualized in a web interface. Next, there's a workgroup appliance that delivers data visualization and virtual conferencing needs to small or medium-sized businesses. And finally, enterprise solutions designed especially for virtual markets like bio-technology have also been developed as more customized solutions.

As Linquist explains in this YouTube video, the technology is even advanced enough to produce a virtual laboratory where researchers can perform model-based drug development.

If you have Java installed, you can test their web-based virtual world demo by clicking here (launches Java window). For more information about their solutions, visit GreenPhosphor.com.

We'll admit, we were intrigued as soon as we hit Favo's landing page - it was the screenshot of Favo in action that drew us in. With its bookmark browser that looks nearly identical to iTunes' cover flow visualization, Favo looked like the bookmark management tool we didn't even realize we were craving until it was right in front of us.

Over the past year, we've seen several search engines launch featuring visual browsing, but the closest we've seen to a decent visual bookmark manager was the Windows-only Tidy Favorites, and it only did thumbnail-sized screenshots. While visual browsing may look great, it hasn't proved to be a "Google killer" by any means. For search queries on the net, it seems text is still the way to go. However, when dealing with smaller data sets - like our albums in iTunes, for example - visual browsing can find its niche. It only makes sense to integrate this technology with our favorite bookmarks, too.

According to the Favo homepage, the new service will offer several other appealing features as well. Most notably, Favo claims it will be able to automatically label and tag your favorites based on its intelligent tagging engine. Finally! We're so sick of tagging! A service that does it for you is definitely worth a look.

Favo also promises fast search tools, recommendation and sharing features, groups and channels, synchronization between browsers, and even a curious automation feature they're describing somewhat vaguely as so:

"Your surfing experience does not get interrupted by dialogs that ask you to pause and organize the content you are collecting. Favorites are collected from your browser and from your friends' recommendations."

How well this will all work is anyone's guess, since the service hasn't even launched yet. But based on what Favo intends to do, it's certainly worth signing up for a beta invite.

Still, let's face it, playing what are essentially online computer games where the "fun" is in interacting with random strangers may have been an interesting experiment, but now that the hype has died down, we can see that they only attract a niche crowd. These worlds will not deliver the promise of the 3D web that we had once imagined they would.

Where 3D is Useful: Mapping

When 3D technology is implemented for more practical purposes, though, it can be incredibly useful. Some of the most innovative developments in 3D technology involve advances made in mapping. The newly redesigned Google Maps' Street View is a great example of this. Their recent update lets you drag a figure (the "Pegman") over any street to get a preview of Street View for that location. When the Pegman lands, the whole map turns into a Street View viewer. Google Maps with Street View has also been delivered to our mobile devices where it helps us navigate unknown areas of our world when we're away from our computers.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has also integrated 3D into their mapping platform, only in a different way. They launched their Live Labs project Photosynth in August, which lets you stitch together photos to create detailed 3D environments. Last month, they integrated Photosynth with Live Maps, letting you explore various landmarks and cities in 3D as well as share your own "synthed" photo collections with the other users of Live Maps.

Where 3D is Cool: Browsing

Also this year, we've seen some developments in the use of 3D to deliver better visual browsing experiences. Amazon launched their 3D Winodwshop site which lets you virtually browse through the company's top products.

We've also seen other web applications integrate this 3D visual browsing technology including ManagedQ's semantic Google-based search, Photo Stream's visual newsroom as well as newer search engines like Viewzi and SearchMe. Although none of those have hit the mainstream, they all are interesting experiments.

However, one of our favorite 3D browsing tools is the technology from Cooliris, a browser plugin that lets you transform the web into an immersive 3D experience. With Cooliris, you can surf a "wall of content" from sources like Google, Flickr, Yahoo, SmugMug, and DeviantArt. In October, the company also launched an iPhone application that does the same.

Similar to Cooliris's iPhone app, Microsoft took Seadragon, the technology that supports Photosynth, and released it as an iPhone application callled Seadragon Mobile. With this mobile app, you can browse several image collections including the Library of Congress maps from the TED demo, NASA images, a two-billion by two-billion pixel map of the world, and you can also load custom content via an RSS feed.

3D's Future: Shopping?

As The Guardian reports today, there are many people who think that online shopping is the next frontier for the 3D web. In particular, they make mention of a company called ExitReality, who is developing a 3D plugin that can transform any 2D web site into 3D. Visitors using ExitReality's plugin can change into avatars to wander through web sites and chat with other users. Says ExitReality founder Danny Stefanic, who has been working with virtual reality since 1994, "it's not a replacement for viewing the 2D page - that is still the best way to consume that content - but it gives everyone a 3D space that they can utilize if they want to. And what we have found is that instead of the two- or three-minute session times of 2D websites, when we are in 3D and exploring and chatting to people with similar interests, we spend 20 to 30 minutes there." He notes that sites implementing 3D could offer online sales agents that could chat to visitors or demonstrate products.

In other words, 3D for marketing and sales. Sigh.

Is There Nothing Else?

Last year, we had once wondered if 3D interfaces were useful or just a novelty. We think the jury is still out on that. Besides mapping of course (which extends to new developments in Google Earth, too), the majority of the 3D launches we've seen over the year are fun...even cool...but not incredibly life-changing. In fact, the newest uses of 3D are even more kitschy and even less useful than those that we saw earlier this year. The most recent 3D sites actually backtrack to 3D's beginnings and require you to break out your nerdy red-and-blue glasses to view them. For example, a site called Snowdin.com, is a new holiday Flash production by Colle+McVoy that's entirely in 3D.

For even more mindless fun, we just discovered that you can create your own red-and-blue doodles at the new Neave Anaglyph site.

Sure, we may have rushed out to the car to retrieve our glasses left over from the weekend showing of "Bolt 3D" to view these sites, but we don't imagine that 3D glasses will ever become the new must-have accessory for internet surfing. So where does that leave 3D technology for consumers browsing the web? Fun, games, and virtual worlds? Yes, that seems about right. Although some businesses will find 3D technology useful as we noted before, we did not see this technology become the most ground-breaking innovation of 2008...unless you count the pinching and zooming that took place on our iPhones.

Image credit: 3D images above courtesy of Adverlab; main image: ny3d

Keeping tabs on all the happenings across the social web can be a challenge. For some, FriendFeed is the destination of choice as it lets you see streams of information from all your friends as they share, comment, and participate in social media. Others find the application too noisy, as it requires a lot of manual tweaking and filtering to remove unwanted content.

A good alternative for those who want to keep up with the social web in a more organized fashion is PeopleBrowsr, a virtual dashboard for tracking your online identities. It's very much inspired by TweetDeck with panels that you scroll through horizontally. It also has a "Groups" feature, but its implementation was somewhat confusing. We'll give it a pass for now, though, as the application is still in alpha.

How To Use It

To get started with PeopleBrowsr, you simply add your online IDs and authorize the PeopleBrowsr service when necessary, as with flickr and YouTube. Once you're finished, you can then switch over to the PeopleBrowsr app itself.

There are actually two different views to choose from: the stream view (which resembles TweetDeck) and the Gallery view which lays out the avatars of your friends across the page. You must select your view of choice upon login. In the Gallery view, you can click on friends' avatars to see their latest updates and then interact with those updates accordingly, depending on what network you are browsing at the time.

To select the network you want to see, there's a navigation bar at the top left side of the page. You can scroll through the various online sites listed, selecting those you want displayed. In the Stream view, this is more practical as it loads up each new network in a separate panel, letting you then scroll horizontally from Twitter, to flickr, to YouTube, etc.

Your Streams

Each network provides different options for the types of views you can add to your paneled view. Clicking on the network from the navigation bar (see above) will add some default views to the window, but you can also choose to add other views from the navigation bar above the streams themselves. For Twitter, the views to choose from may include things like Replies and your Friends Timeline, for Flickr it includes options like Favorites and Friends' photos, and for YouTube, it includes your videos, your favorites, and so on.

PeopleBrowsr also has "PeopleTags" which let you tag friends in order to create cross-network groups. This feature wasn't entirely intuitive to use because the "My Groups" option appears at the top of the page even when no groups have been created. It seems to respond to a click but does nothing even though you're assuming that it will open up a pane for group creation as in TweetDeck. However, as you click on the individual posted items in your streams, you have the option of tagging them in order to create groups which then makes the "My Groups" link functional.

PeopleBrowsr Shows Promise

For an alpha app, this is a great first start. There are still some tweaks, like the Groups feature for example, that need to be made. Also, although it was possible to add a FriendFeed ID, FriendFeed did not appear in the top navigation for some reason. Without its inclusion, this would be an incomplete application. The app was also slow at times, once even crashing Firefox entirely. However, it's hard to tell for sure whether that's the app at fault or the pre-beta OS the testing was done on. That said, PeopleBrowsr definitely looks like a promising tool to organize your social streams in ways that make sense to you.

That's what makes something like Project Palantir so interesting. Because we get a brief glimpse into how Facebook is really being used.

Project Palantir is a continuation of a Facebook Hackathon project designed to "visualize all the data that Facebook gets." The name is likely a reference to the palantir of Orthanc from the Lord of the Rings. (Or for the slightly less Tolkien-adept, "that big eyeball thing that sat on top of the tower.")

Suffice it to say, Palantir is designed to provide near-omniscient sight into Facebook activity around the world. Using a globe as the canvas for the visualizations, the Palantir developers have managed to plot a subset of the massive number of Facebook activities taking place on earth at any given moment, in real-time. Different flavors of visualizations allow views of specific activities like friend requests and profile views, including the amount of data being produced and direction in which data flies this way and that.

This glimpse into the inner workings of Facebook is mesmerizing - and informative. Even with a brief look at Project Palantir in action, the data-philes are likely salivating. Unfortunately, there's no word on when - if ever - the project will be publicly available. For now, we'll just have to be satisfied with deconstructing the brief demo of Project Palantir in action.

For more discussion, see coverage at TechCrunch, where the video was first reported.

There are tons of sites on the web that you want to tag and share with others, but there are also plenty that don't need to be out there for everyone to see. You don't need to socially share the link to your blog's administration page, for example, or the link to your local news and weather site. You certainly don't need to share the links to that weird health ailment you've been googling, either. Or perhaps you want to keep private the research you've been doing for an upcoming article on your blog.

Of course, you could just bookmark these pages using a web 2.0 service and set them to "private," but there's something to be said for having the links close at hand, available in only a couple of clicks from your browser's menu.

The only problem with using a browser's bookmark menu - the problem that the Web 2.0 bookmarking services meant to solve - is that when you have so many links saved, it becomes difficult to find them again. You even start to forget what you have in there. With delicious, Ma.gnolia, etc., this problem was dealt with by tagging favorites with keywords to make them more easily searchable.

Visual Search For Personal Bookmarks

While tagging may work for some, the new service from Tidy Favorites thinks they have a better way - visual search.

We've noticed visual search is a space that's heating up. There are iPhone apps and visual search engines galore. Even Amazon got in the mix with their new "window shopping" storefront.

Now you can take advantage of the power of visual search to browse through your own bookmarks, too. (Yes, we know Ma.gnolia uses thumbnails, but it's not quite the same.)

How Tidy Favorites Works

Tidy Favorites installs like desktop software, but functions as a browser plugin. If anything, it's more like Evernote than it is like a Web 2.0 bookmarking service. 

What makes Tidy Favorites easy to use is its simplicity. To bookmark a page, all you need to do is click the "Plus" button it adds to your browser toolbar. Then, to interact and organize your favorites, you just click the "Star" button.

The Tidy Favorites organizer will appear, pre-loaded with a tab that displays your "Top Links." These are the sites you visit a lot, similar to what both Opera and Google Chrome display when you open a new tab.

Uncategorized bookmarks reside in the Tidy Favorites sidebar, ready to be orgnaized. At the bottom of the dashboard, you can right-click to add a new tab. Then you simply drag and drop links from your sidebar onto that tab's page. The tabs at the bottom are very intuitive to use if, especially if you're familiar with Excel spreadsheets. Within each tab, you can also right-click to add folders to further categorize your favorites.

Other Nifty Features

Besides just organizing bookmarks, Tidy Favorites has a few extra features that make it stand out. One such feature is a cropping tool that lets you slice out a piece of a web page and save that as the visual thumbnail for the site. For example, if you regularly visit a page to see your local forecast, you could slice out the part that just shows the weather, instead of creating a thumbnail of the entire page.

Using this option, you could make a dashboard of at-a-glance information within one of Tidy Favorites' tabs. When you think of all the different ways you could use this tool, you'll realize that this feature could actually be an improvement on using dashboard-like homepages where data comes from pre-designed widgets and RSS feeds.

Tidy Favorites is also portable, so if you want to take your links to go, you can add them to a USB drive.

The Not-So-Good Stuff

One feature of the software that really needs to work well is the built-in search box. Using the search function, you should be able to easily search your bookmarks by entering in a keyword or search term, then click "Google," "Images," or "Wiki" (Wikipedia).  When using the Google option, it will by default search your favorites like a Google Custom Search Engine would. But upon testing this, it wasn't finding some links saved even though I used good keywords. It seemed to be returning Google search results, but it was supposed to be searching the bookmarks only. Obviously, this is a critical feature that still needs some work.

Another big problem is that, unfortunately, this software is currently Windows-only. The page that it displays is saved on your computer itself, as its URL starts with your local IP (127.0.0.1). Why this can't be ported over to Mac or Linux is unknown, but we hope they are working on it.

We'll keep our eye on Tidy Favorites for now. It's still rather new, so we'll let them iron out some of the kinks we saw. They still have minor usability tweaks to make like deleting thumbnails from the sidebar after they're dropped in a tab. We think the bookmarks should automatically arrange themselves on the page, too. If they can fix these problems, we could definitely see this as being a great tool for organizing sites, but it's clear they're not quite there yet. So until then, it's back to Evernote for us.

Salesforce

Today, Salesforce.com also announced that it has created a number of tools that will make using the Visualization API easier for Salesforce's own customers and developers. These tools include code snippets and API harnesses and will allow Salesforce customers to create custom reporting and analysis applications for Salesforce's CRM solution or on top of Saleforce's newly announced Force.com platform.

Reporting in the Cloud

As Google points out, more and more companies are storing their data in the cloud, so being able to visualize this data and creating good reporting tools is becoming increasingly important. Creating these reports in the cloud as well seems like a logical step, and we expect that quite a few new applications will be created on top of the Visualization API.

On Windowshop.com, you can either use your mouse or the arrow keys (the keyboard works better) to scroll through a wall of Amazon.com content which includes both best-sellers and new releases in Books, Music, Video, and Games categories. After you zoom in on an item, a preview will play. For an album, that preview is just a snippet of a song; for an audiobook, it's a snippet of the narrator reading the content; for video content like movies, TV shows, and games, you'll see a video clip displayed instead.

The content is sorted into different scrollable columns with column labels at the top describing the items below. There are columns with both the best-sellers and new items for each category, but there are also Editor's Picks and "Best-Selling of All Time" categories, too. As new content is added to the site every Tuesday, the older content is moved to the right, which keeps the Windowshop.com product list in chronological order.

Cooliris Should Be Flattered

The Windowshop site is so much like a Cooliris-enabled web page, that it had us scanning for a "powered by Cooliris" logo somewhere on the site. The scrolling, zoomable wall of content is very similar to what the Cooliris plugin provides. It seems the entire site has been inspired by the technology if it doesn't, in fact, actually use it to power the virtual "windowshopping" itself.

It's interesting that this site was created only a few months after Amazon.com became Cooliris-enabled themselves, with their own Amazon category underneath the Discover/Shopping feature within the Cooliris browser. There, you can scroll through several other categories of content like Home & Garden, Baby, Electronics, the Kindle Store, and more. You can also sort the content displayed by price, popularity, or relevance. The Cooliris wall also has a nifty 3D effect when scrolled, where the Windowshop.com wall stays very much 2D.

Still, the Winodwshop site is another good alternative to visually browsing the best from Amazon.com, even if it is just a tribute to Cooliris's technology. You know what they say about imitation...

We've seen more of these types of visual browsing technologies pop-up this year, from ManagedQ's semantic Google-based search to Photo Stream's visual newsroom and, more recently, to new search engines like Viewzi and SearchMe. We wonder: will 2008 be remembered as the year visual search took off?

The non-profit organization called Sunlight Foundation, whose mission is to use the Internet to make information about the U.S. government more accessible,  just released a visualization of campaign contributions from 1990-2008, broken down by industry sectors and party lines. From this app, profiled on Programmable Web, you can see how the finance, insurance, and real estate industries spend more than others. The visualization is interactive - just push the play button after configuring the settings. It was built using Google Motion Chart and data from OpenSecrets.

2) Visualizing Earmarks

Earmarks are a hot topic in the current U.S. Presidential election. You can visit  the web site earmarkwatch.org to investigate those spending measures inserted by members of Congress into bills that direct taxpayer dollars to their pet projects. But an even easier way to track which states are the worst for using earmarks, this visualization over on ManyEyes is useful. Wow, look at Alaska!

3) Visualizing Election Polls

University of Utah computer scientists have written software they hope will eventually allow anyone to interactively and visually analyze election results, political opinion polls or other surveys. The software displays data in the form of "radial" charts that are doughnut-shaped and include features of traditional pie charts and bar graphs. The charts are interactive and animated, too. You can watch a video demonstration over here, but unfortunately, the poll-analysis software isn't quite ready for prime time. What a tease!

4) Electoral College Prediction Tracker

This interactive visualization widget provides an overview of the predicted outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The rows depict the results from different news agencies (The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, etc.) and the columns represent the different U.S. states. The states width is based on the number of electoral votes they have available. Political bloggers will really like this one, too - it's embeddable!

5) The 2008 Presidential Election In The Blogosphere

This next visualization, perspctv.com, is an informational dashboard that summarizes and graphs the Internet activity relating to the 2008 presidential elections. The charts compare the similarities as well as the differences between the mainstream media and user-generated content, such as that found on political blogs. Currently, the graphs include CNN polls, new mentions, blogosphere mentions, Twitter mentions, a U.S. electoral map, and Google Trends-based timelines. (via information aesthetics)

"Born out of someone's frustrations with browsing photos on the web through static web pages that offered a meager user experience at best." You just might be glad this person was frustrated. FotoViewr is a great web app that brings the cover flow style to the popular photo sharing site Flickr. Fotoviewr requires no registration and you don't have to give you your Flickr password. All you'll need is your Flickr username and you're good to go. FotoViewr provides users with four different gallery views: Flow, Wall, Horizon, and Floor.

Creating Your FotoViewr Gallery

Simply pick a view and enter your Flickr username. FotoViewr allows you to choose between your Flickr photosets or tags for deciding which images to display. Once you've selected these options, you'll get a nice cover flowesque slideshow of your gallery. While you can't embed the galleries yet, there is a link provided for you to share your creations with others. Even better, you can use FotoViewr on Facebook with the FotoViewr Facebook application.

Flowing Nicely

FotoViewr is off to a nice start with its selection of viewing styles and smooth response. However, image loading times still need a little more work. If you have a huge Flickr photoset, then it will take a while for all the images to load. Be prepared to wait. it would've been nice to switch gallery styles even after you've created a gallery, along with a quicker way to make a new gallery. Hopefully these features will be implemented in the future. All in all, FotoViewr is a service to keep an eye on.

Harrison created a series of ring graphics showing all stories, as well as breaking them down by month and day (above). He also made rings using the entire set of Digg historical data going back to December 1, 2004. I won't try to guess what trends one might be able to identify from looking at the Digg Rings (though the above graphic seems to indicate more site volume on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday), but the results are simply gorgeous. Certainly one of the coolest Digg visualizations we've seen. You can download full PDFs of the rings at Harrison's site. ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/visualizing_digg_tree_rings.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/visualizing_digg_tree_rings.php Visualization Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:00:00 -0800 Josh Catone Last.fm is a great music service that keeps track of your listening habits. Though you can view stats such as last played tracks, top artists, or most played songs with just words and numbers, it can be limiting in so many ways. We're huge fans of visualization tools, so wouldn't it be cool if you could grab a visual history of your Last.fm stats? LastGraph is just the service for the job.

Getting Started

Using the Last.fm API, Andrew Godwin writes and runs LastGraph, a great Last.fm visual history tool. To start, just enter your username to hit enter to get a queue ticket. LastGraph is a beta web app so there are some kinks and issues. A queue happens to be one of them. Fortunately you shouldn't have to wait more than 30 seconds for the page to refresh with a nice selection of visual goodies.

LastGraph grabs the last 20 weeks of data, which is a lot if you happen to use Last.fm on a regular basis like I do. The following stats are available for visual displaying:

• Artist Histories
• Quick Timeline
• Timeline Posters

Artist Histories

Artist histories allows you to see your latest artists sorted by the most played artists at the top. Clicking on a name will display a visual graph showing how many times an artist was played over the past several months. Take a look at my chart for Linkin Park:

If you click on the image to enlarge the graph, you'll notice that that there are some really big gaps in the graph. While Linkin Park is one of my top 5 most played artists, I don't listen to them very often and the gaps in the graph show this. l just recently picked them up again and now they're dropping back off. The great thing about having listening habits displayed in this manner is that you can find out what a user's current listening tastes are. While Last.fm will tell you they're one of my favorites (which they are), LastGraph will tell you that I'm currently exploring other artists at the moment.

Quick Timeline

Quick Timeline is another visual graph that gives you a view of your overall listening habits. Last.FM may record your listening habits, but doesn't provide a way to keep track of how many songs you've listened to within a specified length of time beyond a week. You have no way of comparing how many songs you've listened to in the past month versus this month. LastGraph's 'Quick Timeline' view give a great resolution.

Timeline Posters

LastGraph provides posters of your viewing history. The result is a complicated but useful representation of your listening habits. You can specify a period of time you'd like to have a poster generated for, the color of the poster, and the amount of details you'd like the poster to have ranging from terrible to super. There's another queue for the posters which could take several minutes to render depending on the length of time specified, the detail level, and the number of user requests. The posters are available for download in PDF and SVGZ format. Here's a look my poster for the month of May, rainbow style, with super detail!

Last.FM Should Incorporate LastGraph

All of the data provided by LastGraph is available for exporting in Excel, CVS, and JSON formats. You can even get individual artist data from the 'Artist Histories' page. What I'd like to see next is an expansion from artists to songs. It would be cool to see how often I've played certain songs like Misery Business By Paramore throughout several months or days.

If Last.fm could incorporate all their data in the same manner, you could get an alternative way of seeing your compatibility with other users. The data could be used not only for finding users that match our music tastes overall, but also our current tastes, which could be a more relevant match for users that constantly change their listening habits and music styles.