VizWorld.com

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a combination of music, film, and interactive events that takes place in Austin, Texas. Given that the people who attended these events are technologically savvy, SimpleGeo took some geolocated data and visualized them. From the article:

Data for the visualization was taken from eight different sources – FourSquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Flickr, Bump, Brightkite, BlockChalk, and Fwix. Information used in video was previously shown as a live datastream during the festival at http://austin.vicarious.ly/.

via : Visualization of Geolocation App War At SXSW

Science conference, gis, sxsw

Astronaut Soichi Noguchi has taken yet another breathtaking picture from the International Space Station. This time he aims his lens at Washington D.C. However, I bet that Robert Harrison could have done just as good a job with his duct tape and balloon.

Washington DC. Weather is getting better. on Twitpic.

Science astronomy, international space station, nasa

A quick reminder to everyone that tonight at the PAX EAST event, NVidia will be presenting their new GeForce GTX470 and 480 card (making it the formal announcement).  From PCMag.com:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 and 480 GPU Showcase: Nvidia and “special guests” promise “eye-popping” surprises, which sounds very much like a demonstration of the company’s 3D Vision technology using these new power-packed chipsets.

Unfortunately, we (VizWorld) are not on the vaulted ‘Pre-Brief’ list, so I have no juicy NDA secrets to hide from you.  It seems certain other sites were, however, and leaked the information a bit early.   I was, unfortunately, not quick enough to see what they posted.  The rest of the sites will be unleashed from their NDA shackles at 6PM Eastern I’m told, so reviews will be littering the internet tonight.  I’ll read them and try to post some cliff-notes later tonight.

In the meantime, if anyone finds anything impressive, let us know via email or comment!  Anonymity preserved if requested.

via What to Watch at the PAX East Game Extravaganza – Reviews by PC Magazine.

Hardware fermi, nvidia

The Big Picture is a financial blog that I track because it gives me insight into things that are happening that I have no experience with. Occasionally they find some great graphics, as is the case today. They have posted a portion of an infographic from a book titled Business Booms and Depressions Since 1775 which was printed in 1944. The chart shows the booms, depressions, inflation, federal debt and business activity over a 169 year period.

The full size of the graphic is too large to post, for even as a jpeg the size was 4,857 x 952. You can download it as a PDF from the St. Louis Fed FRASER archives.

via : Business Booms and Depressions Since 1775 @ The Big Picture

Science infographic

Now may be the time to “buy in” if you’ve been waiting to join the 3D Home TV market, as a new promotion from Amazon & Samsung could get you a brand new 3D HDTV, BluRay Player, and two pairs of the 3D glasses at a pretty significant discount.

Currently two TV’s are available for Pre-Order at Amazon:  The Samsung UC46C8000 46″ tv ($2,7999 USD), and the Samsung UN55C8000 55″ TV ($3,499 USD).  Both TV’s are 1080P, 3D -Ready, 240Hz LED HDTV’s with 4 HDMI inputs and internet connectivity for downloadable widgets & integrated Skype calling.  If you pre-order one before the end of April and buy a compatible Samsung BluRay player (Currently, the Samsung BD-c6900 for $359), then you can get the Samsung 3D Glasses Kit (which we’ve talked about earlier) for Free!

It’s no small investment, but getting what’s normally an extra $350 for free, on top of Amazon’s usual discounts, is a pretty good deal if you are in the market for a compatible TV and BluRay player.

Hardware 3d, bluray, samsung

The beautiful image to the right was not taken by NASA. Nor was it taken by a rocket. Nor was it taken by a high-altitude weather balloon, which you might have guessed from the title to this post. No, the stunning image was taken by an amateur, using an inexpensive digital camera. He not only took images, he also took movies which you can see on the Gnews link. From the article:

Robert Harrison, 38, used a collection of cheap parts costing £500 to create a balloon-mounted camera that can travel up to 21.7 miles (35km) above the surface of the Earth. The result is a series of pictures taken from a height that only a rocket or weather balloon can reach. Mr Harrison, an IT director from Highburton, West Yorkshire, has launched 12 high-altitude balloons (HABs) since 2008

More images can be found at The Icarus Project and on his Flickr page. You can also watch a video of the story at ITN.

via Journey into space with a balloon and duct tape – Times Online.

via Million Dollar NASA Photos Beaten by Budget Balloon

Science space

AMD is reclaiming a bit of the OpenGL crowd with their latest beta drivers that bring OpenGL3.3 and OpenGL4.0 support to their newer hardware.  If you have a Radeon HD5400, HD5500, HD5600, or HD5700 then you can load up the new driver and begin playing with everything OpenGL4.0 has to offer (except double-precision support, which is coming later).

The fact that we are able to announce our support for OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0 at launch is an incredible feat on the part of our OpenGL software team, and speaks volumes to the commitment and continued support that the entire team brings to the many developers utilizing OpenGL. In fact, with the launch of these updates, industry pundits have commented that OpenGL is in for a renaissance of sorts. As a company that believes in and encourages open and industry standards, maintaining OpenGL as a strong and viable graphics API is important to AMD.

via Ready, Willing and Able – AMD Supports OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0 | AMD Developer Central Blogs.

Hardware amd, ati, drivers, opengl

The New York Times has published an article, and an accompanying chart, on how Social Security is expected to pay out more money this year than it will collect in taxes. The Congressional Budget Office did not think that would happen until 2017. If the CBO missed this target so badly, it makes one wonder how bad they will miss the target on the deficit, or on the cost of health care. While the chart is a simple visualization, it has profound implications on all United States citizens.

The problem, [Stephen C. Goss] said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.

via Social Security Payout to Exceed Revenue This Year – NYTimes.com.

Graphics infographic, new york times

When I first stumbled across this video, I shrugged it off as a hoax.  The results are so amazing, and so fast, that it seems beyond the realm of feasibility.  However, I just found that it originated from the Adobe Blog by John Nack, giving it a whole new level of legitimate background.

One of the biggest requests we get of Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. From retouching to completely reimagining an image, heres an early glimpse of what could happen in the future when you press the delete key. How might you use this new capability in your workflow?

You have to see it to believe it folks, just watch the video below.  I’ve seen similar effects from PDE & Level Set algorithms at old IEEEViz conferences, but those required significant computing power (supercomputer-level) and lots of time, nothing this fast.  Perhaps it’s making use of GPGPU acceleration?  Perhaps they’ve found some shortcut?  Perhaps it has nothing to do with that technology?  We’ll find out soon enough.

Graphics, Science adobe, algorithm, imageprocessing, photoshop

The Mars rover named Opportunity landed on Mars on January 25, 2004. The original mission was to last ninety Martian days, or sols. Six years later, the small rover is still doing great science. Currently Opportunity is next to a young crater called ‘Concepcion‘. The crater had dark rays emanating from it, which means that it is likely a young crater. Since it may be young, this made it an interesting target for Opportunity to visit.

While at Concepcion crater, Opportunity took the opportunity to take some pictures of rocks that had been ejected from the 10 meter crater. In the false colored image to the right, we can see some of the differences in materials on one of the rocks.

The rover used the tools on its robotic arm to examine the texture and composition of target areas on the rock with and without the dark coating. The rock is about the size of a loaf of bread. Initial analysis was inconclusive about whether the coating on the rock is material that melted during the impact event that dug the crater.

This view is presented in false color, which makes some differences between materials easier to see. It combines three separate images taken through filters admitting wavelengths of 750 nanometers, 530 nanometers and 430 nanometers. Opportunity took the image during the 2,147nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Mars (Feb. 6, 2010).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

On March 9th, Opportunity left Concepcion crater, and has driven 614 meters towards the Endeavour Crater. Thus far the rover has driven more than 12 kilometers, but still has about 19 kilometers to go.

via : Mars Rover Examines Odd Material at Small, Young Crater

Science astronomy, mars, nasa