VizWorld.com

Today we’re bringing some of the most recent infographics made about Facebook, and it’s no surprise that a couple of of those are about the safety and privacy issues. First, the Facebook scams, by Bit Defender, followed by the Facebook privacy setting guide, made by Zone Alarm. Mindjet made a brief history of the world’s biggest Social Network, while The Nonprofit Technology Network and M+R Strategic Services explains how Nonprofits are using it. And if you think safety is an exclusive problem of Facebook, Secure List reminds us Twitter’s long history with malware.

Read more…

Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

AVS just released a new version of their visualization tool OpenViz, which seems to offer some interesting new features aimed at the growing infographics and unstructured data spaces.

• Color gradients, lighting effects, shadows and unique perspective can be applied to any data visualization to help users detect subtle nuances in the data that would otherwise go unnoticed;
• Custom 2-D and 3-D shapes and infographics can be created to capture the behavior of sometimes-unwieldy data formats such as social media, sensor data and market measures; and
• Data architects and solution designers can collaborate on novel ways to exploit larger data volumes and deliver innovative results to decision-makers via integrated cloud, desktop and mobile strategies.

via Data Visualization Software From Advanced Visual Systems Empowers Next-Generation Data Analysis | SYS-CON MEDIA.

Science avs

For the new film “Soul Surfer”, VFX house Engine Room accomplished an impressive feat: 750 VFX shots with only 10 employees on staff, for only $1 Million.  Tapping into a large number of freelancers and outside talent, they managed to make all of the greenscreen scenes (necessary for the missing arm) and the face replacement effects seamless.

That introduced another technical challenge for Schmit and his visual effects producer Michael Caplan. Their task was to carefully meld Robb’s face onto Hamilton’s body, all the more tricky given that Robb was about 9 inches shorter than the 5-foot-11 Hamilton. That was achieved through a combination of digital effects and camera tricks.

As far as McNamara is concerned, the digital magic worked seamlessly.

via On Location: L.A.-based effects company Engine Room rides the wave of ‘Soul Surfer’ | Got Entertainment??.

Graphics engine room, movie, vfx

The Georgia Tech NVIDIA CUDA Center of Excellence is preparing a nice 2-day long tutorial on GPU programming and heterogeneous computing, including both CUDA and OpenCL.  The event will only cost you a $100 registration fee and the cost of your room and time, making it one of the best ways to get into GPU programming.

Hit the website for all the details and links.

Keeneland Workshop | Keeneland.

Science cuda, education, nvidia, opencl

James Cameron has been rather vocal recently about his intent to film the next Avatar movie not only in 3D, but at a higher framerate, 48 to 60fps.  Why, you ask?

Without getting way too technical (and boring), a faster frame rate theoretically offers a much smoother viewing experience for action heavy scenes with far more detail. However, the problem with faster frame rates in the past is that for less motion oriented sequences, the effect can be somewhat jarring. But Cameron is already figuring out a way to make the leap to even more real looking effects and is set to show off a demonstration sometime today.

Sure, it increases realism to get the film closer to “human eye” framerates, but does it really do anything for 3d? Cameron seems to think so, but I tend to agree with this tweet from @5tu:

Telling me “3D benefits from more fps” is like saying that hitting me in the face with a bat benefits from a good running start.

via ‘Avatar’ Sequels To Arrive With Long-Awaited Higher Frame Rates; Cameron Eyes Brazil For Inspiration > The Playlist.

Graphics avatar, vfx

Last week, Apple completed 35 years of history, and Ria Novosti made a timeline with the main milestones of that inspiring journey. And to speak about Apple, nowadays, it’s almost the same as speaking of the iPad. So, we continue with some interesting stats about the “Tablet King”, provided by Discounter Code, GigaOm and eBay. Finally, Geekaphone shows us why the iPhone 4 is the world’s greatest camera.

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Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

A brief history of the iPad – Infographic

Graphics, Science digest, infographics, list

VisualJournalism is proclaiming the “Death of Datavisualization in the News”, which from their description seems to also be proclaiming the death of the slew of infographics that get cranked out by some design houses on a seemingly hour-by-hour basis.  Their reason:  Data Visualization isn’t News, it’s a tool used to help promote and explain the news.

No longer will it be enough to execute graphics with a certain wow-factor and then hope for the best. You need to be sure, that you have a story to tell. We’re taking back responsibility for the visual experience and will try to avoid all the arbitrary connections and untrue stories, that readers have been fooled into seeing in the presented data-sets.

Anyone knowledgeable about visualization knows this already, but to some this is a big deal:  Far too many websites and companies think they can simply post the data and a clever interactive tool and they’re done.  In reality, this is merely the first part of the process: The tool must be used to find some previously unknown nugget of information, or provide some new glimpse of information previously buried in the mountain of data.  That’s where the News is.

via The Death of Datavisualization in the News – VisualJournalism.

Science journalism, visualization

VisualisingData has a great list of visualization tools, ranging from the big dogs (R, Processing) down to the lesser-known guys (Mondrian, D3) that winds up being a great starting list for anyone looking to get into the data visualization space.

This second part presents the prominent and powerful data visualisation programming languages and environments that dominate the creative engineering that sits behind today’s design output

via Visualising Data » Blog Archive » Part 2: The essential collection of visualisation resources.

Science api, list, sdk

I’m sad to see Data.gov go, but it seems dozens of small startups are rising up to take its place as sources of freely availably public data.  This week is the Data2.0 conference, and it seems that without really meaning to, the Focus of the event will be the collapse of Data.gov.

Yet, not all is lost: there are over 50 startups at the Data 2.0 Conference which specifically aim to make data accessible and useful with or without Data.gov.

As Nick Ducoff, CEO of InfoChimps, wrote:

“It would be very helpful if the government would devote its limited resources on simply pointing us to public data sets wherever they live in the wild. Socrata, Infochimps and others can do the rest of the heavy lifting (appending metadata, making the data findable, etc.). [U.S. CIO] Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park and others have been great cheerleaders for open data and I hope this doesn’t take the wind out of their sails.”

Several of the early-stage data startups pitching at the Data 2.0 Pitch Day (including DataMarket.com, Envirogent.org, opencorporates.com, opensignalmaps.com, and micello.com) are themselves new data sources giving businesses and consumers better access to data.

Hopefully the many startups using Data.gov as their primary source of data can switch to these other companies, and hopefully they will all embrace the same goals of open and transparent access to the data.

via As Data.gov Goes Dark, 50 Startups Prepare to Take its Place | Smart Data Collective.

Science data, government