Periscopic Now

Although it’s still early in the evolution of HTML5, we’ve started to receive many requests to develop data visualization projects in HTML5 instead of Flash.

In most cases, these requests have been related to a desire to reach a wider audience, and the belief that HTML5 will be more compatible than Flash. We’ve also heard a lot of people mention that they need to have their visualizations work on the iPad.

These are reasonable expectations and requests, so we did some research to find out exactly which audiences we could reach by deploying a large data visualization project .... read on ›

As a contributor to Infosthetics, I recently had the opportunity to review Gephi.  Here’s an excerpt from my post:

I do not often get to play with networks, yet I find them fascinating and full of knowledge gathering potential. The data visualization works of Moritz Stefaner, Jer Thorp, and Mark Lombardi captivate me. I am intrigued by relationships, how we perceive them, and how we can understand them.

Gephi, the “Open Graph Viz Platform”, is not just for the hobbiest node nerd. It is a hardcore, professional tool for network researchers and other smarty pants. If you know the difference .... read on ›

Here is the culmination of our previous three posts reviewing the big 3 of social visualization tools: Swivel, Many Eyes, and Tableau Public. This is it – the cage match, the final showdown.

Using the (arguably) peerless example of information visualization, Minard’s infographic of Napoleon’s march, I endeavored to test the capabilities of each tool, head to head. The goal was to use the multi-layered and data-driven storytelling capabilities of Minard’s graphic as a benchmark for visualization.

Setting off, I thought this was going to be very fun process. I was wrong. Very, horribly wrong. I hope the details of this .... read on ›

You have no doubt seen a Tableau chart before. They tend to be sleek, interactive, and intuitive. And they have already appeared in the Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, and CBS Sports among other places. The software is loved by many and quickly becoming the industry standard for those who DON’T necessarily consider themselves to be analysts.

And it just became much easier for the non-analyst set to create excellent interactive charts with the recent release of Tableau Public, a new tool that puts the power of Tableau into the hands of everyone. This free version .... read on ›

As we announced a few months ago, we will be starting a new feature aimed at reviewing visualization tools. This ongoing feature will hopefully shed light on these tools and if they might fit into your workflow. In the meantime, please feel free to give your opinion on this new reviewing feature in the comments section below. Should we change any of the criteria? Are there any inaccuracies? What did we miss?

We are continuing the three-part series of online visualization tools. We started last week with a review of Swivel, and now we’re moving on to the heavy hitter, .... read on ›

As Google (Public Data Explorer) and Microsoft (Pivot) are getting into the mix of online data visualization tools, it is evident that this is a realm to carefully watch. Public data is de rigeur and blogs in this field are becoming ubiquitous, hence the perfect storm for online visualization. While public data is not necessary for online viz, it certainly makes it easy for the masses to enter the fray of data analytics.

As we announced a few months ago, we will be starting a new feature aimed at reviewing visualization tools. There are many tools out there .... read on ›