VizWorld.com

On February 5th, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the unemployment rate fell to 9.7% from 10.0%. While I am more than happy that fewer people are unemployed, I have reasons to be skeptical. The problem is that we read news reports of continued job losses, yet we also hear that the unemployment rate is falling. It seems that something does not add up. Let’s see if we can take the massive amount of data that is available at the BLS, perform some simple visualizations, and see if we can understand why continued job losses and lower unemployment can happen at the same time.

Read more…

Science employment, feature, unemployment

Mint has published another infographic, this time on the trade deficit of the United States. A trade deficit occurs when a country imports more goods than it experts. In other words, it is a transfer of wealth from one country to another. Over a short period of time, this is not a problem. However, over many years, or decades in the case of the United States, this can be a problem. Mint takes a look through the decades at how the U.S. went from having a trade surplus with the world in the 1960′s and 1970′s to having a trade deficit ever since then. Personally, I do not like how the infographic was produced. First, the years in a decade are grouped together, which makes it difficult to tell when we transitioned from trade surplus to trade deficit. Secondly, the graphic has a line graph showing the surplus or deficit in a percentage of GDP. The problem is that it does not show a deficit as being negative, shows it as positive with just a different color. Finally, the graphic uses a pie chart to show which countries are our largest trading partners. According to the pie chart, we only had nine trading partners. Still, you can take this opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others, and make a better graphic yourself. Click on the link for a high resolution version of the infographic.

via : Spending Beyond Our Means: US Trade Balance By Decade

Graphics infographic

If you have some old time red/cyan glasses, then head on over to The Road to Endeavour blog to see some great images of Mars from the Opportunity Rover. The image to the right is from a region called Chocolate Hills that is in the Concepcion Crater on Mars. While you might think that the Chocolate Hills is a reference to Valentine’s Day which was a couple of days ago, it is not. The region is named after The Chocolate Hills in Bohol, Philippines. It shows what appears to be a flat topped tower amidst a scattering of rocks. I am sure someone will think that this is a ziggurat made by ancient martians, and that NASA is keeping the truth from us. From the blog itself:

But this next rock is one of the most fascinating in the area, for sure. I wouldn’t like to try and count all the layers in it; there must be hundreds… click on this image to bring up a full size version that will (I hope !) impress you…

To see the image he is describing, you will need to head on over to the blog.

via : The Road to Endeavour blog

Science 3d, mars

We wrote last month about how Good sponsored a contest this past month to produce an inforgraphics on the Haitian earthquake. The submissions are in, and they have been posted on the site. My favorite is from Emily Schwartzman which I have placed in the thumbnail to the right. The winner will be announced next week, but you can leave your opinion on the best graphic in the comments section on the site, or via their Twitter.

Design an Infographic for Haiti: Submissions

Graphics haiti, infographic

Sony is proclaiming an early death for OLED by ending their XEL-1 product sales in Japan.

They’ll still continue selling OLED TVs internationally, but won’t pursue the Japanese market anymore, due to slow sales. Their XEL-1 was the first to hit the market, just two years ago, and sells for 200,000 Yen ($2,222) in Japan—all 11-inches of it. No wonder they didn’t catch on.

In addition to ending sales, they’ve also ended production according to Reuters, meaning that once the existing stock is sold, it’s gone.

Rumors are that Sony will return to the market with a new device called the KDL-ZX, and they claim they will continue to develop mid and large size OLED panels for other devices.

via  Gizmodo. and Oled-Display.net

Hardware oled, sony, television

Adobe’s CS5 Suite is on the Horizon, code named ‘White Rabbit’, and AppleInsider has a sneak-peek at some of the fantastic new features.  Shown above is their new retouching capabilities with ‘Content Awareness’ (see the ducks disappear?), but perhaps the most desired feature is the new support for 64-bit systems.

John Nack, Senior Product Manager for Photoshop applications, wrote that the new 64-bit version “is great for pro photographers with large collections of high-res images,” in an April 2008 blog posting. He noted that opening a 3.75 gigapixel image on a 4-core machine with 32GB RAM is about 10x faster in the 64-bit version of Photoshop currently under development than it is on the existing version.

In addition to Photoshop, AppleInside has some details on Flash, Dreamweaver, and InDesign CS5, all seeing some impressive feature improvements.

via AppleInsider | Sources offer peek at Adobe Creative Suite 5 for Mac.

Graphics adobe, mac, software

Cool Infographics has updated their the My Digital Life infographic from version 1.0 to version 2.0. It is fairly fascinating to see all the gadgets that he has and how they connect to one another. As you might expect with any high-tech geek, he has his Apple iPhone 3G, black Apple MacBook from 2006, and Apple iMac from 2009. I am surprised that he is using a 3G and not a 3GS version of the iPhone. As for me, I still have my old Motorola RAZR V3 from 2005.

via : My Digital Life 2.0: A Consumer Gadget Map

Graphics infographic

To most of you this is nothing new, but when you wind up explaining it to friends and family, maybe this new infographic from Gizmodo will help.

It covers Anaglyphic (Red/Blue), Polarized, and Parallax Barrier technologies (commonly known as glasses-free).

Full graphic after the break.

How 3D Works: A Simple Picture Guide – How 3d works – Gizmodo.

Read more…

Science infographic, stereoscopic

When I began this series of investigative reports on Second Life, one thing I was really looking forward to was to see just how much “science” was going on in Second Life.  I wanted to know is the majority of what happens inworld Social or Academic?

The reality wound up being more complex than I originally thought, being heavily influenced by the perspective of who I was speaking to.  Some people said science was everywhere, while some people said it was a nonexistant community.  After several weeks of digging around I’ve come to some conclusions, and I share them here.

(10:30am Added an addendum to the end of this story)

(2/17/2010 Another addendum)

Read more…

Science feature, research, sciencesim, secondlife, virtual worlds

VisualEconomics has posted an infographic showing a decade of unemployment. The problem with using a map of the United States to show unemployment is that it limits you to just a few snapshots in time. In this case, the snapshot is limited to the years 2000, 2005, and 2009. However, it does not take much to realize that of whatever political stripe you are, that things have gotten worse over the past decade. Let us hope that the next decade turns out to be much better.

Click to see the graphic full-size.

via : A Decade of Unemployment

Graphics infographic, unemployment