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I just got an email from the Wall Street Journal asking me to link to this article in their Technology section on the “Unsung Videogame Heroes of 2010″.  At first I was surprised and excited, then I saw the list.  The list is a very obvious “Our game didn’t sell enough so please plug it one more time for us” PR post.  Just look at their selection:

• Fallout New Vegas – Would have been more popular, had it actually been playable.
• Mass Effect 2 – An Unsung Hero?  It was one the biggest titles of 2010.
• Star Wars the Force Unleashed 2 – So much potential, it quickly wound up in the bargain bin for having a lousy story and boring gameplay

Come on.. Some true “Unsung Heroes” of 2010?

• VVVVVV ?
• Limbo ?
• Minecraft?
• Super Meat boy?

How about anything that didn’t come from a major studio?

The Unsung Videogame Heroes of 2010: Fallout: New Vegas, Dance Central, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 and More – WSJ.com.

Graphics list, video game, wsj

The Wall Street Journal published the recipients of their annual Innovation Awards, and there are quite a few visualization-oriented winners.

The one most people are talking about is Unity’s win in the Software category:

San Francisco-based Unity Technologies won in this category for a set of game-development tools that make it cheap and easy to create three-dimensional interactive content, including games, training simulations and medical visualizations, for a range of devices from cellphones to game systems.

The software for creating 3D online universes typically requires teams of engineers who spend years creating and refining these tools. As a result, they’re often too complex and expensive for small-scale or amateur game developers.

Unity’s software simplifies the process of building 3D games and other programs. It includes an easy-to-use editor that can take prefabricated components—rain or falling crates, for example—and combine them with other features to create full game environments.

But they’re not the only ones.  Some others to see:

Consumer Electronics, Runners up:

NanoLumens Inc., U.S.: Lightweight digital displays that are flexible, thin and energy efficient. The first product, a 112-inch display, weighs less than 90 pounds, is less than an inch thick and consumes less energy than five light bulbs.

Ford Motor Co., U.S.: MyFord Touch, an instrument panel for cars that replaces traditional buttons, knobs and gauges with voice commands, customizable LCD screens and five-way controls on the steering wheel similar to those on cellphones and MP3 players.

Nokia Corp., Finland: An “augmented reality” browser for mobile devices, called Point & Find, that lets users get information about real-life objects by pointing a camera phone at the object.

Medical Devices Winner:

Zoom Focus Eyewear LLC, winner of the overall Silver award, won in this category. (See “ A Different Kind of Eyeglasses “)

Network/Broadband Winner:

Vidyo Inc., based in Hackensack, N.J., won in this category with its technology for delivering high-quality videoconferencing over the Internet or cellular networks at a fraction of the cost of dedicated “telepresence” systems.

and Runnerup:

Microsoft Corp., U.S.: An experimental Internet application, called Pivot, designed to help users to explore, organize and visualize collections of data quickly by showing relationships between the information.

The WSJ Technology Innovation Award Winners, Category by Category – WSJ.com.

Science award, unity, wsj

The Wall Street Journal has an infographic online showing the effects of Marijuana and how it compares to other substances.  The information is a bit bland, but covers some stuff like the altered consciousness, memory impairment, pain reduction, and others.

WSJ.COM.

Science biomed, infographic, wsj

The Wall Street Journal has a new interactive infographic online showing the growing disparity between CEO’s and laborers, and the amount of taxes each pays.

Over the past 30 years, chief executives, Wall Street bankers and traders, law-firm partners and such amassed ever-greater incomes, while the incomes of factory workers, teachers, office managers and others in the middle grew much more slowly. In 2007, the top 1% of U.S. families accounted for 23.5% of all personal income in the U.S., according to economists .

via Income Gap Shrinks in Slump at the Expense of the Wealthy – WSJ.com.

Graphics economic, infographic, interactive, wsj

The Wall Street Journal has created an interactive map tracking hurricane traffic for 2009, as well as some of the big hurricanes of recent history (Katrina, Ike, etc).  They currently only show “Bill”, but plan to update it as new storms arise.

A series of tropical storms and hurricanes battered the Atlantic in recent summers, killing thousands, destroying towns and homes and causing spikes in oil and gas prices. Follow major storms’ paths, and locate oil rigs and refineries in the map below.

via The Wall Street Journal Online – Hurricanes Map 2009.

Graphics, Science flash, hurricane, interactive, weather, web, wsj

Over at the Wall Street Journal, they’ve compiled a staggering number of statistics on home loan defaults into a fantastic infographic.  The article accompanying it is a bit overwhelming in it’s complexity, but the graphic does a great job of distilling down the basic points.

A survey found that one in eight U.S. households with mortgages was in foreclosure or behind on its mortgage payments during the second quarter, putting added pressure on programs aimed at preventing foreclosures.

While foreclosure starts have slowed on the subprime loans that ignited the mortgage and banking crisis, loans extended to borrowers with good credit are deteriorating at a faster clip as falling home prices and mounting job losses weigh on more households.

via Souring Prime Loans Compound Mortgage Woes – WSJ.com.

Science economic, home, infographic, wsj

Back to the Wall Street Journal again today with a great interactive map of the Tour de France route.  The map on the route shows each of the segments, while data on the left shows elevation maps along the route and which day that portion of the route takes place.  They have pictures along the route, and the whole thing is a great interactive piece.

Portions of the race already complete contain small news snippets about who’s in the lead.

Map of Tour de France Race Route 2009.

Graphics infographic, interactive, map, sports, tourdefrance, wsj

The Wall Street Journal has compiled data from FDIC to create an interactive map showing the 77 bank failures the US has experiences since the beginning of 2008.  It animates in time so that you can see when the banks fail, and the size of the overlaid circle indicates the size of the failed bank.  It’s fully interactive and connected with detailed information lower down the page.

Failed Banks – The Wall Street Journal Online.

Science economic, financial, interactive, wsj

A interactive infographic is up on the Wall Stree Journal website graphic unemployment figures back to 1948.  Rows indicate months (top row in January, bottom row is December), and columns indicate years (left is 1948, right is 2009).  The colors indicate percentage unemployment (green is 2%, red is 11%).

That red strip in the middle is the recession of 1982.  With economists predicting the official numbers to top 10% of the end of the year, you might see a repeat of that nasty redbar.

Broader U-6 Unemployment Rate Hit 16.5% in June – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

Science economic, financial, infographic, wsj