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M.A. Thomas of John Hopkins University has published a little piece of code that analyzes the government database of contracts to see just how the contracts land amongst the many players in the industry. No surprise, the bulk of the contracts land in the hands of just a few big companies.
Scholars and practitioners are expressing concerns about the impact of unprecedented levels of government contracting on economic and political concentrations of power and on government accountability and transparency. Understanding the total organizational structure of government contractors is key to many of their concerns, such as identifying and resolving organizational conflicts of interest. Until recently, there was little publicly available information on the ownership of government contractors. However, a government database includes partial information, allowing the first visualizations of these ownership structures by means of a STATA program that exports to Netdraw or Pajek.
Obviously this is only as accurate as the database, which is a bit suspect since some big players are missing from that visualization above (Lockheed, Raytheon, CSC, and many others). But his concept and data would make for some great interactive viz, I imagine.
via usgcontractors.info.
Science federal, government
To close the first week of technology infographics, we continue with some more about smartphones, starting with the Evolution of the Cell Phone, Lattest Tech World curiosities and factoides about cell phones, and Tech and Gizmo‘s explanation of the differences between cellphones and smartphones. Then, 3ipass breaks down the use of smartphones, and GigaOm shows the current state of mobile in the enterprise.
Read more…
Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, travel, Visual Loop, visualizations
I just saw that the USDA has released a new Food Pyramid, and this time it’s not even a pyramid! Shown to the right, they seem to adoped the new “lickable” visuals popular these days and gone in a new “less is more” direction with the design. I have to admit, I like it.
Granted, anything is better than the last revision: (shown below).
Say Goodbye to Food Pyramids – Kevin Glass.
Graphics pyramid, usda
iRise is trying to drum up some interest in their iRise Enterprise Visualization Platform through a $20,000 Developer Contest based on their “iBlocs” feature. Develop a nice interactive visualization using iBlocs in just XML & JavaScript, and you could get a piece at the conclusion August 31st.
“Our goal is to show that these components can be created in a matter of hours or days by a skilled Javascript developer, and, by expanding the library of available components, enable our customers and partners to build highly interactive visualizations in a fraction of the time it previously took,” said Maurice Martin, iRise president and COO.
via iRise Announces $20,000 Developer Contest Series | SYS-CON MEDIA.
Science contest, irise
NVidia’s getting a nice 12-month head start on GTC2012 with an announcement that’ll be colocated with LANL’s Accelerated High Performance Computing Symposium next May in the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. Of course, if you can’t wait, then you can always review the GTC2010 information on their brand new year-round site.
A new online resource for attendees of GTC 2012, and entire GPU computing community, also went live today at www.gputechconf.com. The site is a year-round resource, featuring details of all keynotes, technical sessions and events, conference scheduling tools, social media resources and much more.
Get all the details on their site, and the details on some upcoming webinars.
via NVIDIA Announces GPU Technology Conference 2012 – NVIDIA Newsroom.
Science conference, gtc, nvidia
Pushing Pixels has a great interview with ‘Gmunk’ who did some of the VFX work for Tron:Legacy. They get into the typical workday stuff of working in the VFX studio, daily reviews and concept sketches, but also get into surprising depth on Digital Domain’s technology and workflow.
Gmunk: We developed so much stuff. Digital Domain has a very special VFX pipeline, there’s nothing else like it. And we found a way to get these stereoscopic 3D cameras into our 3D applications, like Cinema4D. We used a lot of openFrameworks applications that had to take in these stereoscopic cameras. Digital Domain had a technical director Jon Gerber who helped us accomplish that, to write the scripts to get the cameras to go into Cinema4D and openFrameworks. And then out of our 3D apps we would render stereorenders and then check those on The Hyundai.
via Visual effects of Tron: Legacy and beyond – conversation with GMUNK · Pushing Pixels.
Graphics digital domain, interview, movie, tron, vfx
One of the major recent revolutions in personal technology was, arguably, the cell phone. But, what do we do with it? GSM Arena answers that one, and then, if we’re talking about portable gadgets, of course we have to mention the tablets. First, from Riyaz, comes the history of Tablet Computers, followed by Column Five Media‘s overview about the impact of tablets on the news industry. The folks at Reviver Soft teach us how to get more life out of a Laptop battery, and, to close, a look at how green are e-Books, brought by Clean Technica.
Read more…
Graphics design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, travel, Visual Loop, visualizations
A new VFX studio is on the street today, built from the pieces of Ascent Media and CIS Visual Effects. Both owned by Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, they’ve been combined and renamed into Method Studios under the guidance of the new Executive Vice President Dan Glass and Weta Digitals CTO Paul Ryan, now the VP of Technology.
“By combining CIS with Method, we are able to provide our clients a broader range of visual effects services with an integrated workflow across Deluxe’s multiple locations,” said Stefan Sonnenfeld, President of Creative Services for Deluxe.
This new studio has offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, and London, making it an international venture with projects available to tap into tax incentives and resources around the world. Get all the details at their new site.
via Visual Effects Companies CIS and Method Form Global Powerhouse – BroadcastNewsroom.
Graphics ascent, cis, method
Microsoft is showing off their vision of a “Flash-free” world with a fancy animated website built entirely in SVG.
SVG Girl Internet Explorer 9 feat. SVG Girl by jsdo.it
To celebrate the official release of Internet Explorer 9 we’ve made this special website in collaboration with jsdo.it, the site that allows you to write and share HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, right on your browser.
I tried it in my Chromium build and it worked perfectly, other browsers may do differently. Nonetheless, it’s some great graphics and design work.
via SVG Girl.
Graphics ie9, microsoft, svg
VizWorld.com 
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