Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Google starts bubble-blowing

Statistics can seem numbing -- column after column of grey, boring numbers. But statistics can also be represented through animations, such as colorful bubbles dancing over your screen.

Last year, Google aquired the statistics animation program, Trendalyzer, from the Swedish Gapminder Foundation. Now the basic functions are available as small software gadget, that lets you put color and motion to your own datasets.

Trendalyzer started as the brainchild of Hans Rosling, professor in international health at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. He searched for a way to tell his students that the “world was getting better;" that differences in standard of living, life expectancy at birth, child mortality and so on were diminishing. His son Ola Rosling and Ola’s wife Anna Rosling-Ronnlund developed the animation software.

At the TED conferences in 2006 and 2007 Hans Rosling got a lot of attention for his lectures on world development, in which he used Trendalyser to illustrate the message. (He also got some extra attention for swallowing a sword-- or to be precise, a 19th century Swedish army rifle bayonet -- on stage.)

The development of Trendalyzer was organized by the Gapminder Foundation and financed with grants mainly from the Swedish International Development Agency. Last spring, Google acquired Trendalayzer from Gapminder; the company also retained the services of Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling-Rönnlund.

The two Swedes have since worked on a new version of Trendalayzer that can be used to visualize and animate all sorts of datasets, from stockmarket statistics to population demographics. Last week Google released the group's first product, a small gadget that can be used together with the Google.doc spreadsheet.

“It is very basic," says Ms. Rosling-Rönnlund. "But you get bubbles and color, you get motion and you can use your own data."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am very interested to follow up "Last week Google released the group's first product, a small gadget that can be used together with the Google.doc spreadsheet." Can anyone provide a link to the gadget?

Anonymous said...

I am very interested to follow up "Last week Google released the group's first product, a small gadget that can be used together with the Google.doc spreadsheet." Can anyone provide a link to the gadget?

TrendCompass said...

Dear Sir,

Epic Systems together with Beemode (www.beemode.com) has developed a Data Visualization software "Trend Compass" almost ready to be released soon. It is an extension to Gapminder.

We are looking to promote that software in various sectors. It is a new concept in viewing statistics and trends in an animated way. It could be used in presentation, analysis,research, decision making, etc.

Here is one link for part of what we did with some Governmental institution:
www.epicsyst.com/visual.swf

Here is another link for a project we did with Princeton University on US unemployment :

www.epicsyst.com/main3.swf

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

In a few days you can test the software by uploading data on our website and getting the corresponding Flash charts. This is for a limited number of users.

Regards.

Eng. Hisham Abdel Maguid
Managing Director
Epic Systems
www.epicsyst.com

TrendCompass said...

Epic Systems together with Beemode (www.beemode.com) have developed a Data Visualization software "Trend Compass" almost ready to be released soon. It is an extension to Gapminder which was invented by a Swedish Professor. You can view it :

- www.gapminder.org

It is a new concept in viewing statistics and trends in an animated way. It could be used in presentation, analysis,research, decision making, etc.

Here are some links :
- Part of what we did with some Governmental institution:
www.epicsyst.com/visual.swf

- A project we did with Princeton University on US unemployment :
www.epicsyst.com/main3.swf

- April 2008 Media Monitoring on Cars TV ads (ad duration vs occurences over time) :
www.epicsyst.com/ads/cars.swf

- Ads Monitoring on TV Sattelite Channels during April 2008. Pick Duration (Ads daily duration) vs Repeat (Ads repetition per day).
http://www.epicsyst.com/ads3/allchannels.swf


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

You can test the software by uploading data on our website and getting the corresponding Flash charts. This is for a limited number of users.

Regards.

Eng. Hisham Abdel Maguid
www.epicsyst.com