Max Kiesler - Web Design, SOMA San Francisco

10x10 (ten by ten) is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life.

Digg Arc is another great data visualization from digg labs that provideds a broader and deeper view of Digg.. As the labs site states, "Digg Arc displays stories, topics, and containers wrapped around a sphere. Arcs trail users as they digg stories across topics. Stories with more diggs make thicker arcs. Labs projects are the results of collaboration with Digg partner Stamen Design. We've also released a public API for Digg so that anyone can turn Digg data into their own visualizations." I spend a lot of time at digg labs to see a more visual and broader view of all stories being dugg.

If you frequent websites like Amazon, YouTube, flickr and eBay you probably love the mass of content that you can see at sites like these. As a designer I tire of "sameness" in ways to browse websites. With the exception of flickr the only way to browse the content on these sites is the all to common linear list view. oSkope gives you another. As they say on their website, "oSkope is a search assistant with a highly intuitive visual interface. oSkope lets you browse quickly through a large number of images a preview information with minimal paging. Selected items can be saved by registered users." In many of my test searches I found the information or product I was looking for much more quickly than on the websites themselves. While I can save individual products in a folder I also wish I could save searches. The product is still in beta, however, it is a very fun, intuitive and functional way to search the selected websites. Thanks to the developers and designers.

This project is an example of the "elastic list" principle for browsing multi-facetted data structures. The data is based on the Noble prize winners dataset used in the Flamenco facet browser. Elastic lists enhance traditional facet browsing approaches by, visualizing relative proportions (weights) of metadata values by size, visualizing unusualness of a metadata weight by brightness and animated filtering transitions. To use the application click any number of list entries to query the database for a combination of the selected attributes. If you create an "impossible" configuration, your selection will be reduced until a match is possible. You can also switch on little sparklines to see the temporal distribution of each metadata value. While I've seen this concept used several times before the elastic list interface was very fresh. Thanks!

Twittervision is a real-time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter. The application is basically a mash-up of the Twitter API and Google Maps. The interaction is smooth and fast and gives you a great vision into who's Twittering around the world and at what speed. If you're as big of a fan of Twitter as I am you spend far too much time viewing the Twitter map. In order to try out the application just sign up for twitter and post. You must have a location and an image defined to appear on the public feed (and to be located on the map). Hats off to David Troy who spent his free time to develop this fun visualization of Twitter.

In many ways this site feels like an exploration. There is no about section or faqs, so when you arrive you're not really sure what to expect. As I found out, it turned out to be a wonderful visual experience. The site provides several free software packages that allow you to compose algorithmic music, image and video presentations. The results are stunning as you will see from the examples on the site. While it takes a little getting use to, the flash based navigation is fun easy to use. The downloads are available for Mac and PC.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts I'm very interested in new ways to present blog content. Data streams, attention data and rss blending all address this issue, however, they all still relay on activities presented in a liner fashion. While the standard blog layout works well for discovery I'm wondering if there is a way to display blog data in a new paradigm . Box Grid was originally developed as an experimental blog site. The two things I find most fascinating about Box Grid are the fact that it was originally released in 2002, and that does not use flash. The interface is all CSS and javascript based. While this type of content visualization will not work for every blog it's a place where we can start to imagine new ways to surf a blog. The source code is also downloadable!

This visualization shows the carbon dioxide emission levels for every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates - all in real-time. The site was created by David Bleja (a.k.a. Stillwater). All of the data used in the visualization comes from the World Factbook and the United Nations. To see it in action just mouse over any country and the application will display population, CO2 emissions, death and birth rates. Another column keeps a running tally of CO2 emissions, death and birth rates for the world in the time you've been on the site. This is a very insightful way to show the impact different countries have on climate change.

If you have children you know that many search engines retrieve sites you may not want them to see. If you're a kid you know how boring most search engines can be. "Quintura, Inc. is the next-generation web search company that was launched with a mission to make Web search easier and faster by adding context or meaning to keywords and visualizing search. The patent-pending technology of Quintura is based on over a decade of the founders' innovative research and development in the area of neural network and artificial intelligence". Quintura also has a wonderful search for standard use, and a women's version is planned soon. So far I love both versions that are public.

This is a site which lets you see in real-time if any website is blocked or censored in China. They've created a website in China and they route your url request on greatfirewallofchina.org through to their server in China. The server in China opens the url and the result is send back. Their testing is only based on one server on one location in China. They do have different backup servers in different locations in China in case one goes down. Other locations and other servers may give you different access to the various websites. While the animation is really just an activity indicator, I felt it was an effective way of showing not only that there was something load, but also a sense of what I was waiting for (e.g. waiting for the server connections in each country). Nice job!