EXP

NYC BigApps Winners Announced

by Craig Kanarick on February 5, 2010 | No Comments

NYC BigApps is a contest to drive innovation in software that can help the city of New York become more sustainable through transparency, accessibility and accountability. The requirements were simple: write an web-based app that utilizes data from the NYC.gov "Data Mine" -- a catalog of sets of public data produced by local agencies.

The content awards $20K in cash prizes to 13 winners announced tonight. I know a lot of the judges and I think they did a great job acknowledging some really good entries. Personally, I think Trees Near You and WayFinder are the best of the best. Core77 has some in-depth reporting on these and other winners.

Imogen Heap and Her Interactive Dress

by Craig Kanarick on February 4, 2010 | No Comments

Last weekend, at the Grammy's, Imogen Heap wore was was called a "Twitdress", a dress with an attached monitor that supposedly displayed tweets in real-time. The screen was so small and hidden during the broadcast that it was difficult, if not impossible, to tell if it was working but it sure looked interesting. While this wasn't the best example of how to infuse an outfit with technology, given the size of the viewing audience, might be the most exposed example of interactive fashion in the world. The parasol-as-wifi-antenna was a particularly inspired touch.

She wore the dress as she accepted the (appropriate) award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. Not only does she have 1.3 million followers, she's embraced the digital age by inviting her fans and followers to provide feedback, remixes and lyrics ideas.

David Young on Muriel Cooper

by Craig Kanarick on February 2, 2010 | No Comments

David Young and I both got graduate degrees from the MIT Media Lab. We studied at the Visible Language Workshop under the extremely influential Muriel Cooper. Today David blogged about his feelings about Muriel and they are so in line with my own, I just had to link to it. My time at the Lab set me on the path I am on today and I, like David, miss Muriel too. He's also motivated me to dig up my old tapes from those years and get them online soon. In the mean time, watch this:

The 2009 Feltron Annual Report

by cool hunting on January 25, 2010 | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Clearly a person who loves data visualization and thoroughly understands the power of illustrating personal tracking, infographic designer Nicholas Felton released his fifth annual report, the culmination of yet another year's worth of data accretion and (according to his Facebook status) well over 200 hours of labor. With The 2009 Feltron Annual Report, Felton stepped up his game a sizable notch by creating his first ever crowd-sourced report, enlisting the help of relatives, friends, colleagues and even his dentist.

Calling daily on the people he met who he felt "had discerned enough of my personality and activities" to submit a record of the encounter through an online survey, the designer tracked responses and used his own subjective analysis to come up with the data set. While Felton acknowledges the variations in accuracy his methods produce, he explains that he "strives to sort and collate the data in a clinical and repeatable manner that could be reproduced by someone looking for the same stories I have selected. "

Felton also notes that the volume of data was so unwieldy it could have easily spiraled into several more reports. To manage all of the information (and keep his sanity), he enlisted the help of such tools as Processing and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The final product once again makes an intriguingly elegant representation of an individual's activities over the course of a year--this time recorded under the surveillance of his peers.

Tweeting Tasti D-Lite Earns Rewards

by Craig Kanarick on January 25, 2010 | No Comments

Image via Wikipedia

They won't tell you what it's made of, but Tasti D-Lite recently started a new program to reward customers who update their social networks with the brand name. The frozen dessert chain just launched which ties customers' current TastiRewards loyalty cards to Twitter and Foursquare by registering at new site MyTasti.com.

Each time a purchase activity is shared, the customer earns points. It takes between 10 and 50 updates to earn a free cup or cone. 10 of the company's 47 stores across the nation are using the program, with more to come as the weather turns warmer.

I Love My Fitbit

by Craig Kanarick on January 18, 2010 | No Comments

After about 7 months of patient waiting, my Fitbit finally showed up late last week. I've finally figured out how it works best for me and I couldn't be happier. It is tiny and elegant, just like the marketing copy on the website promised. As I use it, I'll start to convey my experiences. Now I just need to get a Philips Digital Life, Withings scale and Samsung MyFit and I'll be all set with my bioinformatics for 2010...

Below is my calorie-burning chart for today:

Ben Fry Hiring

by Craig Kanarick on January 17, 2010 | No Comments

Ben Fry, visualization superstar and co-creator of Processing started a new company a few weeks ago and is looking to hire people. His recent project, the award-winning "On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces," should give you an example of the types of things that his new company will be doing. He's looking for designers, programmers and more, so if you or someone you know is interested, get them in touch with Ben.

Early 2010 Articles on Visualization

by Craig Kanarick on January 14, 2010 | No Comments

2010 is starting off with some great articles about data visualization and their building importance to the business world. On the Harvard Business Review site, former HBS professor John Sviokla writes a quick post about three benefits of data visualization. What are they?

Great visualizations are efficient
Great visualizations can help people discover new understandings
Great visualizations can help create shared understandings

While his article is clear, it doesn't really go in to too much detail, which is unfortunate. With such a great pedigree and a great audience, he could do much more to help champion great data-driven stories.

A much more detailed and predictive article is entitled The State of Information Visualization over on the Eager Eyes blog by Robert Kosara. He (rightly, I think) predicts that interactive web-based data visualizations are going to grow in popularity and complexity and start to be implemented in JavaScript. Like me, he also thinks that bioinformatics will be the main area of growth -- data about people's bodies. He even thinks 2010 could be "The Year of Visualization Theory" where new academic discourse leads to a much better understanding of how visualization should work in the digital age. I sure hope he's right!

Hvass&Hannibal: Losing the Plot

by cool hunting on January 14, 2010 | No Comments

Taking data visualizing to a conceptual level, Danish design studio Hvass&Hannibal's upcoming exhibition "Losing the Plot" at London's Kemistry Gallery engagingly reinterprets info into artworks. (Click on all images for expanded view)

The Copenhagen-based duo created silkscreen prints, wooden sculptures and offset posters, beautifully and tangibly expressing data sets such as the probability theory or the registration of natural phenomena. Adding their own sensitivity to hard statistics, the multimedia designers imagine the data in bold colors, sometimes playing on traditional geometric shapes and at other times turning to more abstract imagery.

The unconventional approach isn't a stretch for Hvass&Hannibal who dropped out of grad school to design full time. Their broad spectrum of work includes album covers, illustrations, installations, music videos, art direction and the team recently offered their design knowledge as guest bloggers on "It's Nice That."

In addition to the works in the show, Kemistry will sell a series of silkscreen prints.

Losing the Plot
15 January-27 February 2010
Kemistry Gallery
43 Charlotte Road
London EC2A 3PD map
tel. +44 (0)20 7729 3636

via Cool Hunting

Blogging from CES

by Craig Kanarick on January 5, 2010 | No Comments

I am currently writing from 34,000 feet above sea level on Virgin America on my way to Las Vegas for CES. I will be posting finds from the convention floor as I find interesting things to write about...

Holiday Slowness

by Craig Kanarick on December 22, 2009 | No Comments

Image via Wikipedia

As it is the holiday season, I am going to be spending a lot of time with my new Kodak i1220, digitizing thousands of printed photos. When I'm done, I'll come back to EXP and post some new goodies. I'll also be blogging from CES so expect lots of great things in 2010 here on the blog.

Happy New Year!

-- cmk

Bigert&Bergström: Tomorrow's Weather

by Craig Kanarick on December 15, 2009 | No Comments

Stemming from a childhood fascination of a weather ball on the top of a bank building in Minneapolis, I am intrigued by Tomorrow's Weather, a double helix sculpture in Denmark comprised of over 60 molecular globes.

What's interesting about this is that traditional weather balls--also known as weather beacons--are usually located on top of buildings or attached to towers. Tomorrow's Weather uses current technology to forecast upcoming elements just like a weather ball, while remaining affixed to the side of the building.

Weather beacons are found in cities from Sydney to Cincinnati, so have a look around to see if your city is included. Often a little poem is attached to the weather codes to make its information easy to memorize. I will never forget that "when the weather ball is red, warmer weather is ahead..."

For real weather fanatics, check out the ambient weather beacon, a home device that also forecasts the upcoming weather.

Microsoft to Release Interactive Data Visualization Programming Language

by Craig Kanarick on December 11, 2009 | No Comments

When the 900-pound gorilla Microsoft announces, as they did a few days ago, a new experimental language for creating interactive data visualizations, people sit up and pay attention. This confirmation of the explosive growth of the field appeals to both programming novices and experts alike, cutting [out?] a wide swatch of potential customers.

A preview is coming early next year, so most people can only speculate on its impact, but I think it is going to be huge. Patterned after Processing (another recent programming

language with rich data visualization techniques), this project from the Microsoft Computational Science Studio is meant to move beyond the usual bar, pie and line charts found so often in Powerpoint and other professional business presentations. Targeting the same audiences, the new language will include features such as maps, 3d shapes, animation features, interaction features, volumetric renderers, transparent colors and a rich library of rendering techniques--as stated in their press materials. The new application doesn't sound like something "people who aren't experts in programming" would want to use.

While personally this all sounds exciting to a geek like me, I can't help but feel that Microsoft saw the success of the new language and ecosystem started by Ben Fry and Casey Reas (Processing), and simply copied the concepts and capabilities and packaged it in a Windows-only, watered-down legally-oppressive "prototype."

NYC BigApps

by Craig Kanarick on December 10, 2009 | No Comments

Combining open innovation and sustainability into one program, NYC BigApps is a competition (unfortunately already closed) to create an application focused on delivering honest and useful information to NYC residents.

The city asks that its wealth of talented developers design an application using at least one data source from the City of New York Data Mine, which includes a vast amount of issues spanning Special Waste Drop-off Sites to Library Events, in order to make the city government more accessible to all of its citizens.

While the submissions deadline has already passed, you can still take part by suggesting an app you would like to see created or submitting a data set you would like to see added the Data Mine list. And the best way to become involved is by voting, which will be open to the public shortly. Until then have a look at the NYC BigApps application gallery.

Reactive and Interactive Digital Billboards

by Craig Kanarick on December 9, 2009 | No Comments

As we are knee deep in decade-review media chatter about the death of the TV ad, I decided to think about other forms of advertising pronounced dead in the past, billboards.

One of the oldest forms of advertising, the billboard first gained traction in the late 1800s. The popularity of the Model T in 1908 drove billboards to become common as roadside advertising and in 1925, the Burma-Shave billboards start populating US highways, cementing outdoor as an important channel for consumer messages.

Over the years, the billboards were the playground of advertising creatives and continue to push the limits of the format. In the 1920's, billboards became reactive and changed their content in realtime with giant thermometers, changing their display with the ambient temperature. What follows is a brief natural history of the reactive and interactive billboard in recent times.

October 2003

Coke launches a 99-foot wide interactive billboard in Picadilly Circus recognizing and responding both to the weather and people waving to it from below (above left).

May 2004

Stellar interactive firm R/GA creates a billboard for Yahoo!'s automotive web site allowing pedestrians to play a video game on a 23-story billboard via mobile phones (above right).

July 2004

Ogilvy launches an SMS-reactive billboard for the Ford Fiesta in Belgium, the first of its kind in Europe (above left).

February 2005

Amex Belgium launches a billboard in which users can upload a photo to a website that in turn displays it on the billboard where a live webcam photographs the billboard and emails it back to the user (above right).

May 2005
Nike ID uses a 23-story Times Square billboard for users to design shoes via mobile phones and see results in real time. The one-minute design session also sends emails and discounts to the designer, er, customer (at right).

February 2006

Disney Interactive has an 57-story tall reactive billboard featuring imagery of the Himalayas. The billboard blinks the eyes of a yeti upon receiving SMS sent to it.

January 2007

Mini Cooper USA launches in Chicago, Miami, New York and San Francisco. After the Mini drivers answer some basic information about themselves, Mini USA sends them a special key fob identifiying them to the billboards they pass by, delivering a personal message based on the information provided.

June 2007
One of my absolute favorites is the BBC America billboards shown above. They were placed in New York where viewers sent SMS messages to answer polls and updated the billboard in real-time.

July 2007
Adobe uses a billboard that reacts to the motion of the person standing in front of it. The system, which uses a simple webcam with complicated processing code behind it is a joy to look at and fun to interact with.

August 2007
Ecko launches a billboard that allows users to digitally spraypaint using a Blackberry.

Feb 2008

Australian billboard sneezes on people.

October 2008
A billboard in New Zealand by ddb tests earphone levels from the National Foundation for the Deaf.

January 2009

Sharpie creates gorgeous interactive billboards.

Feb 2009

Cadbury Splat the Egg interactive bus shelter ad allows waiting passengers to pass the time by playing a video game.

March 2009

In a Rotterdam bus stop, health club chain Fitness First converts the bench into a digital scale with the readout on the shelter wall (at right).

July 2009
Caldwell Banker creates a live 150-foot billboard that responds to text messages with Zip codes by displaying the highest, median and lowest price properties in that zip code within seconds.

July 2009

In Korea Nikon does what looks like a truly amazing job with an interactive billboard that simulates paparazzi to launch their D700 camera (at right).

Sept 2009

I hate to end with a billboard fail, but who can resist laughing at the twitter-enabled billboard below...Happy New Year!

Continue reading Reactive and Interactive Digital Billboards.

The Story of Cap and Trade

by Craig Kanarick on December 9, 2009 | No Comments

Just a few days ago, I wrote about Annie Leonard's brilliant video about consumption, The Story of Stuff. Today she released a new story, The Story of Cap and Trade, timed to coincide with the two-week Copenhagen Climate Conference. As the press materials state, if "you have heard about cap & trade, but aren't sure how it works (or who it benefits), this film is for you."

The Story Of Stuff With Annie Leonard

by Craig Kanarick on December 2, 2009 | No Comments

Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff is easily one of the best videos I have seen all year. This 20-minute masterpiece about sustainable living on this planet has been viewed by over 7 million people in the last year, so perhaps you have seen it. If not, you really should.

Intrigued by questions about where all the stuff around her came from--and almost more importantly where it ends up--this former Greenpeace employee uses a cheerful tone and clever animations to convey important viewpoints about a serious subject.

As The New York Times points out, educators have embraced the short film as a way to supplement printed textbooks and add a more modern viewpoint. I don't blame them, given how the youth are embracing the notions of sustainability.

Weekend Visualizations To Be Thankful For

by Craig Kanarick on November 30, 2009 | No Comments

As it was the most digital, this past holiday weekend most likely generated more data about our habits than any other in history. Two great new online visualizations portray this with beautiful and clear stories about the typical Thanksgiving activities--shopping and cooking.

I first saw eBay's Black Friday map on TechCrunch and was immediately impressed with how hypnotic and psychedelic it was. The pulsating graphics illustrate interesting patterns of our eBay shopping habits on Black Friday, the supposedly biggest shopping day of the year.

The New York Times published What's Cooking on Thanksgiving, a typically clean, clear and wonderfully produced map of allrecipes.com search terms, showing overt regional patterns in our holiday food preferences, or at least our desire to research recipes about those foods.

Physical Digital Physical Mushrooms

by Craig Kanarick on November 29, 2009 | No Comments

From the super smart Dr. Nicholas Nova (Pasta&Vinegar) in Geneva, we have a great example of physical inspiring digital inspiring physical. What it lacks in reactivity, it makes up for in cuteness.

Sustainable: Baking For Good

by Craig Kanarick on November 29, 2009 | No Comments

A new online bakery started by New York-based Emily Dubner, Baking for Good donates 15% of each purchase to a cause chosen by the customer. By tying charity to a guilty pleasure, Baking for Good allows customers to feel better about consuming scrumptious snacks and desserts, while simultaneously providing a simple system for giving back. This additional sense of social justice far outweighs most dietary concerns, making this a delicious digital destination.

The nicely designed website also helps for a great overall experience.

[ Thanks->PSFK->made this for you ]

Realtime: This site is being upgraded

by Craig Kanarick on November 29, 2009 | No Comments

If you are here and notice that it looks different than the last time you were here, that is because I upgraded the blogging software. Unfortunately, that downgraded the visuals for a while until I figure this out. My apologies.

-- cmk

This Is Plot Jewelery

by cool hunting on November 18, 2009 | No Comments

The brainchild of a strategist and an art director, This Is Plot illustrates the subtle beauty of economic data. Each necklace is handcrafted by the London office of advertising giant Wieden+Kennedy, and is comprised of the traded commodities gold, silver, oil and lead. Celebrating the "stories of exact facts," each necklace plots the price of its representative commodity over the span of thirty years, beautifully marking its highs and lows.

The clever necklaces are seemingly the first to plot data as well as the first collection for Wieden+Kennedy, who are plotting another series soon. Prices vary depending on material, range from £94-240 and can be purchased from This Is Plot.

The Power of Visualization

by Craig Kanarick on November 18, 2009 | No Comments

A topical focus of EXP, data visualization is a powerful tool that allows for easily conveying the incredible stories hidden within a set of data.

One clear illustration of this is Anscombe's quartet. Created in 1973, the quartet is four sets of data with identical statistical properties but wildly different visualizations.

Each of the images at the right is from a set of such numbers and below it, a mathematical description. In English, their basic statistical

measures and averages are the same but the shape of the data isn't. Just like the average size of two 6-foot people is 6-foot, so is the average height of two men, one being 3 feet tall and other being 9.

For much more, immerse yourself in the work of Ed Tufte. His first and possibly most famous book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, remains a bible of data visualization and informational graphic design illustrating this example and countless others.

The Secret Life of Walmart's Deli Pizza Box

by Craig Kanarick on November 16, 2009 | No Comments

Say what you will about Walmart's business practices, but it is undeniable that the organization is making incredible strides towards a sustainable company.

Just watch this video below about how their deli pizza box is created. This video comes from their annual Sustainability Milestones meeting held just last week. On their site, you can see over 25 videos about recent efforts.

Sustainable Nau Pop-Up Shop

by Craig Kanarick on November 12, 2009 | No Comments

If you haven't heard of Nau by now (sorry), you really should. The company is a shining example of the new breed of socially responsible company. This west-coast clothing manufacturer is seriously devoted to sustainability -- not only are the clothes all made from renewable products or recycled synthetics, but the entire company was created with sustainability in mind, as explained in their inspiring Business DNA statement. Just take the first sentence as a summary of what they stand for:

The Corporation shall endeavor to conduct all aspects of its business in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, including the promotion of peaceful conflict resolution, the fair and humane management of factory working conditions, the equitable treatment of its employees, the implementation of a sustainable process of product creation, waste minimization and recycling, and philanthropy...

Today, the company is opening a temporary pop-up store in New York called Here/Nau/Now, located in Soho. To reinforce its corporate values, everything in the store aside from the apparel is repurposed items scooped up from the streets of New York, including the branches that comprise the ceilings of the dressing rooms, the coffee-stained curtains, the cardboard and metal displays and more.

You can read some great quotes from their CEO, Gordon Seabury, in this nice article from Fast Company.

The Fun Theory

by Craig Kanarick on November 10, 2009 | No Comments

The Fun Theory is a new project from Volkswagen that integrates digital technology into every day physical experiences with the expressed goal of making sustainable behavior (walking up stairs, throwing away trash, etc) into fun activities. The theory is that if walking up stairs was more fun, more people would do it, and I agree. How great would it be if every staircase was a piano?

They are also using Open Innovation practices to extend the project by awarding a cash prize called the Fun Theory Award to people who submit similar ideas to the one illustrated below...

[ Thanks, Alex ]

20 Years Later, Tim Berners-Lee Wants to Reinvent Data

by Craig Kanarick on November 9, 2009 | No Comments

Time Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has a new passion. His new mission is Linked Data. He wants people to post data on the internet in the same way and with the same enthusiasm that people post articles, documents and pictures. His assertion, and I agree, is that if people shared data the same way they share other information on the web, we'd be able to learn about and solve all sorts of problems we don't even recognize. Watch it and believe. After all, the British Government recently appointed him as the person responsible for opening up England's data to the web. Watch his TED talk below for a passionate and exciting presentation about the subject.

The Jobless Rate for People Like You

by Craig Kanarick on November 9, 2009 | No Comments

While it could use more interactivity and some more color, the latest data visualization from the New York Times, about the jobless rate, is a simple clean and effective use of interactive graphics to tell a depressing and interesting story.

Live Ships Map

by Craig Kanarick on November 9, 2009 | No Comments

MarineTraffic.com is a new website based on Google Maps and some open data that allows people to monitor real time ship traffic around the world. Because of some data constraints, the information is mostly about ships on the European and North American coastlines, but a full range of ships are in the system.

The project is hosted by the Department of Project and Systems Design Engineering at the University of the Aegean in Greece. Rolling over a ship icon reveals information such as the heading and history of the vehicle.

The site refreshes itself automatically every minute or so (depending on what part of the world you are monitoring), making the entire experience fun to just use as a screensaver.

Digital Graffiti Wall

by Craig Kanarick on November 6, 2009 | No Comments

Last week I wrote about a great integration of digital and physical technologies to allow people to simulate painting called Digital Painting. Today a reader tipped me off to another digital painting example called the Digital Graffiti Wall. It is created by Canadian consulting firm Tangible Interaction, a company that claims to create "full-on sensory experiences people can interact with in the everyday physical world."

While the other version used roller brushes with LEDs, this version uses spraypaint cans as the physical controller and can support up to 10 users simultaneously. It is rentable, portable, and outdoor safe, so think about this for your next birthday party!

NYC BigApps Winners Announced

Imogen Heap and Her Interactive Dress

David Young on Muriel Cooper

The 2009 Feltron Annual Report

Tweeting Tasti D-Lite Earns Rewards

I Love My Fitbit

Ben Fry Hiring

Early 2010 Articles on Visualization

Hvass&Hannibal: Losing the Plot

Blogging from CES

Holiday Slowness

Bigert&Bergström: Tomorrow's Weather

Microsoft to Release Interactive Data Visualization Programming Language

NYC BigApps

Reactive and Interactive Digital Billboards

The Story of Cap and Trade

The Story Of Stuff With Annie Leonard

Weekend Visualizations To Be Thankful For

Physical Digital Physical Mushrooms

Sustainable: Baking For Good

Realtime: This site is being upgraded

This Is Plot Jewelery

The Power of Visualization

The Secret Life of Walmart's Deli Pizza Box

Sustainable Nau Pop-Up Shop

The Fun Theory

20 Years Later, Tim Berners-Lee Wants to Reinvent Data

The Jobless Rate for People Like You

Live Ships Map

Digital Graffiti Wall

Subjects

Monthly Archives

Recent Entries

About EXP

Search

Subjects

Monthly Archives

Recent Entries

About EXP

Search

Inspiration