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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Data Puzzle : A PerformancePoint Server 2007 Wordle word cloud
Tag Cloud in Java.
Wordle is a lot of fun to use if you’re a data visualization geek like I am. I took Gartner’s October 2007 report on PerformancePoint Server 2007, selected the Key Points, and copied and pasted it into the Wordle Web page.
The Data Puzzle : A PerformancePoint Server 2007 Wordle word cloud
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Global distribution of the world's water
This is one striking example of why the polar caps are the most important feature of earth.
This shows us why Norway ends up with all of the garbage that falls off container ships.
The black areas really cut a swath through key parts of the world.
But why Saskatchewan?
The whole report is here.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
YouTube - Twenty-First Century Waterfall
America consumes 31.2 billion water bottles a year taking 17.6 million barrels of oil to create them. Enough to fuel 1.5 million cars for a year. America consumes 100 billion plastic bags a year taking 12 million barrels of oil. World figures? 154.3 billion water bottles and 500 billion - 1 trillion bags=147.4 - 207.4 million barrels of oil a year.
So how come there isn't a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor yet? I keep tossing my car water into the backseat when it should be going into the engine.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Demos | Lab49 Visualizations
Lots of finserv-based visualization demos here...
Demos
Lab49 continuously develops applications that demonstrate the latest technologies and how they can be applied in the next generation trading room.
Market Liquidity Analysis Visualization
Lab49 has built a visualization framework that integrates with Aleri's Market Liquidity Analysis (MLA) engine. MLA allows brokers and traders to optimize results across competing exchanges while the Lab49 framework provides a rich visual framework to gain insight into market dynamics. Additionally, the user interface enables users to consolidate trade reports, quotes and order books across multiple exchanges in real-time, creating a single virtual order book that represents the liquidity of the entire visible market. Consolidated last price and best bid/offer record for each security can also be generated.
Panopticon: Demo Gallery
Interesting Java-based visualization tools for stock markets, risk analysis, and the champagne market.
Our visualization software is easy to use and is a great way to explore large datasets, identify outliers and find hidden patterns. As one customer at a major investment house put it, "They help you answer questions you didn't know you had." Discover it for yourself with these online demos.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Fold-Ins, Past and Present - The New York Times
If you're a child of the 70s or early 80s, perhaps you had a collection of Mad magazines? Most likely the backs of those magazines had a couple of creases?
This is quite possibly one of the the best uses of the internet I have seen in at least a year. Fold-ins from Mad, 1960s to present, done in Flash.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Amazon.com: The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures: Dan Roam: Books
This was one presenter at Mix '08 I wish I had seen.
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures (Hardcover)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
World domination and flow charting
One of my favourite games is C&C Red Alert. You can win a free copy of the newest game from the C&C franchise by plotting your master plan for World Domination in flow chart form.
I wonder if my Visio certification prepared me enough for this one...
Villians are destroyers of worlds, enemy of good and source of wickedness. The infamous Kane of the Command & Conquer universe is an excellent example: he's fought the GDI time and time again and helped to spread Tiberium like a cancerous Johnny Appleseed.
But how did he do all this? It's not as if you can just wake up one morning and decide that you're just going to destroy multinational security organizations on a whim. You need a strategy, a guide, a... plan, if you will.
With that in mind, if you had the resources, what would be your great villainous plan? Electronic Arts and Shacknews want to know.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Useful Data Sets
Before data visualization comes data... and here's a lot of data.
The Data Page
This page provides information on how to collect data from a variety of sources. it also allows you to look at and download a number of data sets that you might find useful in corporate finance and valuation. If you have trouble viewing the data in your browser, you can download the data in excel format. I will try to keep them updated, and include the dates of the updates with the data sets. If you want to see the company-specific information, you can download the data on individual firms below.
Recent additions: While most of the data sets here are based upon U.S. firms, I have added updates for Europe (Western Europe and the UK), Japan and for Emerging Markets (Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe) for a few data items - betas and price multiples. Any company with a market capitalization greater that $ 50 million in US dollar terms should be in the datasets; for the non-US companies, any currency data will be in the local currency unless otherwise specified. You can download the data in excel files but the html files will contain only the US data. While I will update the US data every six months or so, I will update the non-US data once a year. I have also added the archived files from previous years for those of you who want historical data. The data is as of the end of each year.
Friday, March 14, 2008
867-5309... but what's the area code?
The abominable ho-man does it again.
This map visualization shows Ludacris and his ho-belt of US area codes... Why's he hanging around Nebraska?
And here's the video. Nate Dogg has got to be one of my favourite rappers...
Sunday, March 9, 2008
How Mario sees the world
From cute to disturbing... visualizing video gaming from the character's perspective.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Gamasutra - Microsoft Excel: Revolutionary 3D Game Engine?
Excel is a beast, but it works, most of the time, and it is the key tool for the backoffice of many companies.
Apparently it can display a spinning cube just like Silverlight.
Cutting-edge computer games use different graphics subsystems -- so-called 3D graphics engines. Source (used in Half Life 2), Unreal Engine (Unreal Tournament), idTech 4 (Doom 3), CryENGINE2 (Crysis) or Clever's Paradox engine are well-known among the players and the game industry experts.
It's time to learn a new 3D game engine name: Microsoft Excel.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Should this read WTF?
I got this error in Visio 2007 when I tried to refresh a spreadsheet data source. Something tells me it wasn't supposed to happen.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Permissible Alcohol Levels Given Vehicular Safety
I wonder if the pink RV looks that way before the 8 glasses of wine?
Monday, March 3, 2008
Just Creative Design | Graphic and Logo Designer
Fonts are important, as it's not just what the words say but how they look.
Here are 30 of the Best Fonts / Type Faces that every designer must own sorted by alphabetical order. There are 15 serif fonts and 15 sans-serif fonts. These fonts will last you your whole career!
Sunday, March 2, 2008
NICHOLAS METIVIER GALLERY - Exhibition - Reverspective Versus Perspective
Reverspective vs. Perspective runs March 6 - 29, 2008 at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.
When you make something in perspective, like a theatre set, it is called forced perspective. When you make something in perspective, but completely the wrong way round, Patrick Hughes has called it Reverspective.
NICHOLAS METIVIER GALLERY - Exhibition - Reverspective Versus Perspective
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Data Visualization and ASCII Dashboards
If only he knew about ANSI art...
While unpacking from a move the other day, I flipped through a copy of my first book, Financial Modeling Using Lotus 1-2-3. Published by Sybex McGraw-Hill in 1986, it explained how to create reports and analyses I had developed in 1984 and 1985 while working as a small-company CFO.
Spreadsheet Dashboards Before Excel: Mini-Graph Reports in Lotus 1-2-3
Choosing Colors for Data Visualization
I just found out today that one of my client's is Tone Blind. I have heard of tone deaf people (I'm one of them) but this was a new thing to me.
Apparently she can't see certain shades or text with fills. This just goes to prove that accessibility is in the eye of the beholder, and there are no good presentations, only the appearance of good presentations for certain audiences.
Color used well can enhance and clarify a presentation. Color used poorly will obscure, muddle and confuse. While there is a strong aesthetic component to color, using color well in information display is essentially about function: what information are trying to convey, and how (or whether) color can enhance it.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Visualization is good. Visualization is valuable. Let's have more visualization.
What does a Graphic Fellow at Microsoft look like?
That's exactly what I pictured.
Jim Blinn's home page at Microsoft Research has some interesting papers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Seems like a brilliant guy.
Visualization is good. Visualization is valuable. Let's have more visualization.
Back in 1979 he was looking at Realism in Computer Graphics. What was one major application of CG in 1979?
One major application area of shaded computer graphics is in real time flight simulation systems. Such systems are designed to train aircraft pilots by allowing them to fly a simulated airplane complete with a view out the window of the surrounding terrain. In such systems, a new image must be constructed some thirty times per second in synchronism with a television based display device. It is the job of the system designer to provide the best possible picture consistent with these time constraints. This severely limits the sophistication and thus the accuracy of the models used in the simulation. Even so, it requires approximately a million dollars worth of special purpose hardware to construct images at the correct rate.
I picked up FSX & my new PC for under $1000. How times change...
He's the "second" MS Graphic fellow. Who's the first?
Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, cofounder of Pixar.
Jim & Alvy worked together in 1979. Small world.
Dr. Smith seems to have an interest in genealogy based on the papers being published on his site. Perhaps we're related? My great-grandmother was a Smith.
I wonder if he had a hand in Microsoft Family.Show?
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Grapefruit
I would have placed pineapples in the untasty/difficult quadrant, and bananas above.
Maybe things will change in 2008 with further fruit/vegetable market consolidation.
Data Quality Solutions with SSIS Whitepaper
Before visualizing data, you need to understand the level of "truthiness" available in the data vs. the actual truth. Questionable data can immediately discount its effectiveness.
Data Quality Solutions
SQL Server Technical Article
Elizabeth Vitt, Intellimentum
Hitachi ConsultingTechnical Reviewers
Donald Farmer
Microsoft CorporationStacia Misner
Hitachi ConsultingJuly 2006
Applies to:
SQL Server 2005Summary: This white paper describes how application developers can incorporate data quality into their Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services solutions. (22 printed pages)
Friday, February 22, 2008
Passed Visio Exam 70-545
I managed to squeak by the fairly new Visio exam, released last September, so I am now a Visio Application Developer.
The exam was fairly straightforward, multiple choice as usual. I was surprised there were no exhibits or case studies in my version. Finished it in about 30 minutes, after going over the marked questions a couple of times and kicking the PC with the loud fan next to me at the test centre.
Why is it that test centres have the crappiest PCs?
Couple of hints - know MSI and everything else around deploying a Visio solution, stencil, or template. Another one that came up a bit was how to reference certain properties and respond to events. I was a bit surprised at how specific the code examples were, and how much the exam focused on deployment rather than solution architecture.
Know your events & how to create masters & stencils.
Also know the differences between the new Linked Data feature and the old Database Wizard feature.
There are also some integration questions related to VBA in Visio and other Office applications.
I used my usual method (documented at SqlServerCentral) of studying with OneNote. Downloading the SDK helped. So did reading www.visguy.com and the MSDN/Technet articles. If I could only figure out how to get OneNote to write the exam for me...
There was also some good content from the various Visio Conferences which posted lots of PowerPoints (oddly enough no Visio diagrams instead of PowerPoints).
I hope that the next version provides a better way of interfacing with the Shapesheet and Formulas, and gives easier access to stencils & templates. Better integration with Reporting Services & the filesystem would be interesting.
And add some Access-style form layout functionality. (size similar anyone? shrink to fit? align lefts?)
Next step is to check out the Visio to XAML functionality for some Silverlight mashups...
If you do end up getting your Visio Developer Certification please let me know what you do with Visio.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
XMLA Thin Miner
If you know what XMLA and DMX are, then this is for you.
Last updated by DMTeam on Tue 11/20/2007 @ 05:01
This sample allows you to generate Data Mining Prediction statements on the fly.
To launch the sample, click here.
This sample allows building DMX (data mining prediction) statements on the fly. The statements are encapsulated in XMLA (XML For Analysis) packages and sent to the Analysis Services server. The server response is also an XMLA package. The sample application parses the response XMLA and displays the result in a table.
myITforum.com : Integrate Visio 2007 with System Center Operations Manager 2007
Poor man's MOM. Add some integration features to check for SQL Backups, software versions, and this could be one amazing tool.
Near Real Time Monitoring (NRTM) Connector of Disk Space uses the new Data Graphics feature of Visio 2007 to display the results of server monitoring. This application enables effective integration of Visio 2007 with the service management solution System Center Operations Manager 2007. The connector helps to view the results of monitoring servers as a clear, comprehensive Visio network diagram.
myITforum.com : Integrate Visio 2007 with System Center Operations Manager 2007
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