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If you have interest in the public datasets used there, may be you like another public data browser, UN Data (http://data.un.org/)
This is (/appears to be) the outcome from Google's acquisition of Swedish foundation Gap Minder -- which was some AMAZINGLY smart professors and academics who visualized UN Data. (I say 'was", they still are smart! Just that they work for Goog now!)

I was privileged to attend a lecture and private demo of their early software when they were an independent.

Great stuff.

(comment deleted)
The "flagship" data visualization seems to be the one Hans Rosling [1] is famous for, and that Google acquired from Gap Minder. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg for interactive data visualization - something made possible by personal computers, but certainly won't be the last we'll see. It's a great first example of our technology being used not as a "better" version of what came before, but a step into what was impossible on the former medium (paper).

Two interesting related questions: (1) what is possible by combining these with a multitouch interface? (2) aside from "drag this slider back and forth", what kind of interaction would be useful?

1. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...

They are built in flash, so they won't work on the iphone, but the same thing can be done in Canvas. But I don't have an iPhone, so maybe canvas doesn't work there either.

What does work on the iphone? Raphael?

Both Canvas and Raphael work on the iPhone (and well, I might say: I don’t think I’ve run into hiccups with using Canvas or SVG, but I haven’t stretched them to their limits either).
This is great, really glad they're moving to JS from Flash.
To clarify for the downmods: Gapminder, which this is clearly based on, used to be 100% Flash. This new site uses HTML for browsing, but still uses Flash for rendering visuals. I think this is a step in the right direction as it makes the data more accessible to a wider audience.
I have the pleasure to brief on our Data Visualization software "Trend Compass".

TC is a new concept in viewing statistics and trends in an animated way by displaying 5 axis (X, Y, Time, Bubble size & Bubble color) instead of just the traditional X and Y axis. It could be used in analysis, research, presentation etc. In the banking sector, we have Deutsche Bank New York as our client.

Link on Chile's Earthquake (27/02/2010):

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/EarthQuakeinChile/

This a link on weather data :

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/aims/

This is a bank link to compare Deposits, Withdrawals and numbers of Customers for different branches over time ( all in 1 Chart) :

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/bank-trx/

Misc Examples :

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/airline/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/stockmarket1/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/tax/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/football/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/swinefludaily/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/flu/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/babyboomers/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/bank-trx/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/advertising/

This is a project we did with Princeton University on US unemployment : http://www.epicsyst.com/main3.swf

A 3 minutes video presentation of above by Professor Alan Krueger Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and currently Chief Economist at the US Treasury using Trend Compass : http://epicsyst.com/trendcompass/princeton.aspx?home=1

Latest financial links on the Central Bank of Egypt:

http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/Aggregate-balan... http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/balance-sheet http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/banks-deposits-... http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/egyptian-banks/ http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/currency-by-den...

I hope you could evaluate it and give me your comments. So many ideas are there.

You can download a trial version. It has a feature to export EXE,PPS,HTML and AVI files. The most impressive is the AVI since you can record Audio/Video for the charts you create.

http://epicsyst.com/trendcompass/FreeVersion/TrendCompassv1....

Really beautifully captures overall trends as well as outliers such as the following: in the first example (life expectancy / fertility) check out the path of Rwanda from about 88-97 (slowly move the slider.)
There was a TED lecture by a founder of Gap Minder that showed this data in exactly the same way a few years ago.

It really opened my eyes that the things I had been told all my life, and was still hearing from people who thought they were smart, were in fact, based on very dated information that was no longer true.

Once a fact is learned by the general masses, it's practically impossible to get them to unlearn that fact after it changes.

This is a fine UI, I've known about it for a long time, but it is putting the cart in front of the horse. Sure, you can browse a tiny, tiny set of data series.

What the world needs is a unified source of searchable, browseable, and joinable time-series data from government, industry, and NGOs. Then put the fancy front ends on. I've been trying to generate interest in this idea for seven years. I don't know why Google hasn't already done it.

I have the pleasure to brief on our Data Visualization software "Trend Compass".

TC is a new concept in viewing statistics and trends in an animated way by displaying 5 axis (X, Y, Time, Bubble size & Bubble color) instead of just the traditional X and Y axis. It could be used in analysis, research, presentation etc. In the banking sector, we have Deutsche Bank New York as our client.

Link on Chile's Earthquake (27/02/2010):

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/EarthQuakeinChile/

This a link on weather data :

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/aims/

This is a bank link to compare Deposits, Withdrawals and numbers of Customers for different branches over time ( all in 1 Chart) :

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/bank-trx/

Misc Examples :

http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/airline/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/stockmarket1/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/tax/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/football/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/swinefludaily/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/flu/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/babyboomers/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/bank-trx/ http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v2/advertising/

This is a project we did with Princeton University on US unemployment : http://www.epicsyst.com/main3.swf

A 3 minutes video presentation of above by Professor Alan Krueger Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and currently Chief Economist at the US Treasury using Trend Compass : http://epicsyst.com/trendcompass/princeton.aspx?home=1

Latest financial links on the Central Bank of Egypt:

http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/Aggregate-balan... http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/balance-sheet http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/banks-deposits-... http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/egyptian-banks/ http://www.epicsyst.com/trendcompass/samples/currency-by-den...

I hope you could evaluate it and give me your comments. So many ideas are there.

You can download a trial version. It has a feature to export EXE,PPS,HTML and AVI files. The most impressive is the AVI since you can record Audio/Video for the charts you create.

http://epicsyst.com/trendcompass/FreeVersion/TrendCompassv1....

All the best.