Researchers at Caltech have come up with a new way to visualize the warping of space and time using what they call ‘Tendex’ lines, a clever way to visualize these fields similar to electric and magnetic forces.
Tendex and vortex lines provide a powerful new way to understand black holes, gravity, and the nature of the universe. “Using these tools, we can now make much better sense of the tremendous amount of data that’s produced in our computer simulations,” says Dr. Mark Scheel, a senior researcher at Caltech and leader of the team’s simulation work.
Shown above is the vortex rendering of the pulsations of a black hole.
For all of those living in America, it’s that time of year again: Tax season. And, during this week, we’ll be bringing some of the latest infographics not only about taxes, but about the economic situation as a whole, and it’s impacts on our daily life. So, today we beggin with a look at the Federal Taxes, by xxxx, followed by Intuit‘s strategies for surviving Tax Season, including how to file a Tax Extension. To close, US Uncut and The Understory bring to our attention some facts and numbers about the big corporate tax dodgers.
Randy Krum has a nice pair of infographics covering iPhone Wine apps, that he built for the team at VinTank.
Two infographics I designed recently for the great folks at VinTank.com, a think tank for the wine industry. Are There Any Good Wine Apps for the iPhone? summarizes the highlights of the data that VinTank gathered from the iTunes Store. Sorting through 452 wine apps is a lot for a consumer to figure out (intimidating!), so they broke them up by price, rating, business model and type of app.
Both graphics look nice, but I particularly like this radial map of the classes of apps. Clean, clear, and a nice use of Color.
Small businesses are a huge part of any country’s economy, and it’s not different when it comes to the U.S. Vistaprint and Cash Advance made some predictions for this year on a couple of infographics, and Intuit shows us the best and worst States for business. Mindflash instructs us about some small business tax breaks, and from Grasshopper Group comes the interesting Fantasies vs. Realities of a Startup.
You might not think Mudbox is an architectural design tool, but if Mark Gage has his way it could be. Check out his interested uses for the tool in this presentation at Autodesk University.
Hear Yale University Architecture professor Mark Gage describe how he is introducing his students to Autodesk Mudbox. Mark comments on the need for today’s architects to get exposure to what media and entertainment creation software can do for them. Recorded at Autodesk University 2010.
Framestore generated many of the VFX shots in the new medieval comedy “Your Highness”, and found several new challenges. From the unorthodox scenes (animating a minotaur penis?) to dealing with a constantly changing script and adlib’ed scenes, fxguide got them to describe some of the work.
McGee: Well there are a lot of wizards that fire magic as a weapon. And the magic comes out in the shape of electricity from a staff or the palms of hands. The director wanted this to be an homage to magic from the past, so he didn’t want the effects to be super-glossy and Harry Potter-style. He wanted it to be a little more man-made, but still look like a modern visual effect. So we came up with this magic that fires from people’s hands and then we have a big action sequence at the end, where the wizard has taken his virgin bride that he has reared from a child, which he is going to impregnate with dragon seed – and then she’ll give birth to this dragon which he will then control and rule the kingdom. He has to impregnate her at the time of twin moons. When they eclipse he is able to impregnate her, so the film is moving to this climax of the twin moons. The ceiling of the observatory opens up to let the moonlight in and the moonlight sends down electricity which puts a forcefield around the bed that he’s strapped this virgin to.
Bryan Connor has a new website out called ‘The Why Axis’ which aims to analyze visualizations critically, hoping to ‘raise the bar’ of what we expect from designers.
Through a regularly updated collection of case studies, interviews and analysis The Why Axis aims to enrich the discussion surrounding the current state of data visualization. Each project featured will be used to help uncover the attributes of a effective data visualization both in terms of aesthetics and functionality. All articles focus on larger data visualization projects, and when possible, illuminate the working process rich with decisions and compromises straight from the mouth of the designer. Our ideal visualization is visually refined, supremely useful and undeniably enlightening
While still young, he does do a great job analyzing some of the better graphics to come out of the Japanese Nuclear Reactor radiation scare, covering everything from the JESS3 graphics to the Xkcd comic.
Lots of us in visualization like to berate Pie Charts, primarily due to their constant abuse and mis-use in mainstream media. Honestly, how many powerpoint presentations have you sat in with a pie chart showing 15 or 20 slices, most under 5%? Robert Kosara has a great article up referencing a paper from 1991, “Displaying Proportions and Percentages” in Applied Congnitive Psychology, that analyzes the usability of Pie Charts compared to Tables and Horizontal Bar charts, and finds them not just acceptable but in fact better (under a very specific set of circumstances).
While it is not surprising that the table doesn’t do too well in the more complex tasks (adding up numbers is more difficult than combining areas), the comparatively bad performance of the bar chart is. They did not include the stacked bar chart here for some reason, which presumably would have done better than the regular one.
In their discussion, they mention that adjacent segments in a pie chart are especially easy to combine, whereas the same is not true for a bar chart. And that, I think, is an important point: if we step away from the focus on accuracy in reading numbers, some of the more complex tasks are actually easier to do with the pie chart. The bar chart is great for reading and comparing individual numbers, but when it comes to adding up bars, it’s a lot less effective.
Researchers at Caltech have come up with a new way to visualize the warping of space and time using what they call ‘Tendex’ lines, a clever way to visualize these fields similar to electric and magnetic forces.
For all of those living in America, it’s that time of year again: Tax season. And, during this week, we’ll be bringing some of the latest infographics not only about taxes, but about the economic situation as a whole, and it’s impacts on our daily life. So, today we beggin with a look at the Federal Taxes, by 
Small businesses are a huge part of any country’s economy, and it’s not different when it comes to the U.S. 
You might not think Mudbox is an architectural design tool, but if Mark Gage has his way it could be. Check out his interested uses for the tool in this presentation at Autodesk University.
Framestore generated many of the VFX shots in the new medieval comedy “Your Highness”, and found several new challenges. From the unorthodox scenes (animating a minotaur penis?) to dealing with a constantly changing script and adlib’ed scenes, fxguide got them to describe some of the work.
Bryan Connor has a new website out called ‘The Why Axis’ which aims to analyze visualizations critically, hoping to ‘raise the bar’ of what we expect from designers.
Lots of us in visualization like to berate Pie Charts, primarily due to their constant abuse and mis-use in mainstream media. Honestly, how many powerpoint presentations have you sat in with a pie chart showing 15 or 20 slices, most under 5%? Robert Kosara has a great article up referencing a paper from 1991, 
VizWorld.com 
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