Google Buys Gapminder

If you work with data and are trying to visualize this data then you will appreciate Google's latest purchase Gapminder. Gapminder and Google share an enthusiasm for technology that makes data easily accessible and understandable to the world. Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. I found Human Development Trends, 2005 the more interesting application (two screenshots are at the bottom of this post). This application shows you visually that the number of poorest people continues to increase while the richer are getting richer among other things. There is also another application available: Gapminder World, 2006. You can see a screenshot of that app at the top of this post. Click on the images to see a bigger image or better yet visit the URL to see these apps in action. Also make sure to visit http://www.gapminder.org/links/data/. this URL contains links to the following sites:

GeoHive - the World in Regions
Nationmaster
OECD Data
Social Watch
Statistics Sweden (Satistiska Centralbyrån)
Sustainable World
The World Factbook
United Nations Common Database (UNSCB)
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
World Bank: World Development Indicators
WorldHistory.com

These two images below are from the Human Development Trends, 2005 app.

map of the world, based on the frequency of its locations mentioned in books.

Here is something interesting and it has to do with data. Inside Google Book Search has some neat maps of the world based on the frequency of its locations mentioned in books. From the site:

We've all seen views of the Earth from space, where the numerous pinpoints of light on the ground combine to yield a speckled map of the world. I wanted to show the Earth viewed from books, where individual mentions of locations in books combine to yield another interpretation of the globe. The intensity of each pixel is proportional to the number of times the location at a given set of coordinates is mentioned across all of the books in Google Books Search.

Here is the link: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/03/earth-viewed-from-books.html