viz.

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

This is an incredibly useful tool for those of you who might be teaching information design courses, or are looking for the best way to present data for your own work. The one problem with the periodic table metaphor is that the authors appear to have padded their list of examples so that they will fit into the periodic table format (how often are you likely to use a “Temple” diagram?). But I suppose that’s just a problem with information design metaphors in general.

If you are interested in rhetoric, hopefully you are already a reader of “It Figures,” where author Figaro provides examples of rhetorical figures in contemporary discourse. He also provides witty images to go along with his posts, some of which go beyond decoration by being excellent visual examples of the figures he is illustrating. In a recent post, he introduces a new figure—the “portmanym” or the “figure of conjoined names”—illustrated by a mashup of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney (which, to my eye, looks strangely like John Kerry). You can see the post here—if you dare.

A few weeks ago I suggested that the seeming ineptness of many amateur videos indicates that most people are more skilled at textual production than at video production. William Saletan’s piece at Slate on video resumes got me thinking about this topic again. While the popularity of non-commercial videos on youtube argues that our culture is in many ways already video-literate, it is likely that the youtube community is self-selecting for video-savvy individuals. However, Heather Havrilesky’s recent review of Donald Trump’s Apprentice implies that there is a lack of awareness of a broader audience in that group, as well. Since we are near a point when video production will be as ubiquitous as text composition, it will soon become necessary for training everyone in video composition. If this is the case, I think it is likely that a huge part of the training in the rhetoric of video communication will be left to composition departments.

The CWRL’s game design / virtual communities workgroup was featured on the local news last night for their participation in STS’s Game Court Design Competition.

You can view the video here. The workgroup’s white paper is also available if you would like to read more about their work.

Following up on my post from yesterday, where I pointed out that Facebook originated as a way to display and comment on photos, Facebook has been a nexus of information about victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. The descriptions of 7 of the 15 victims listed on this page on NPR’s website contain references to Facebook memorial pages or have pictures that were acquired from Facebook accounts.

Facebook users have also generated a number of online memorials. Consider these images that I grabbed from the “Longhorns Commemorating the Virginia Tech Shooting” (requires login) group’s page:

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion passes along this article from Fast Company profiling Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The ostensible point of the story is that Zuckerberg and co. have passed on some huge buyout opportunities—Yahoo apparently offered them $1 billion for the site—a move that is considered to be pretty risky. I, however, found the recitation of Facebook-founding lore to be the most interesting part of the piece.

According to this story from Wired, NASA has developed a workgroup devoted to providing open source solutions to the organization’s programming needs. The project is called “CosmosCode,” and what I find most interesting about it is that the meetings that led to its creation were held in Second Life. Also interesting is the fact that the group meeting on NASA’s island were not all experts, but often featured anything from doctoral students and retirees.

At the beginning of the month, the Daily Mail published a series of distorted maps of the world, using the map area to track some other variable, like HIV prevalence, alcohol consumption, and military spending.

The people at Project Hamad (who I mentioned a few days ago in this post) have a poster campaign with a stylized image of Mr. Hammad reminiscent of the “André the Giant has a Posse” stencils.

Andrew K. Woods has a short piece on Slate titled “The YouTube Defense: Human Rights Go Viral” where he argues that judicial decisions, from Brown v. Board of Education to recent rulings on Guantanamo detainees, have always used public opinion as a bellwether, despite claims of strict fidelity to established law. Realizing this, lawyers for one Gitmo inmate, Adel Hamad—who Mr. Woods identifies as a Sudanese school teacher—have posted a video on YouTube outlining the paucity of evidence supporting to his detainment. After 70,000 viewings, the U.S. government has placed Hamad on a list of detainees to be released.