Like I mentioned before, Robert Kosara (EagerEyes), Andrew Vande Moere (information aesthetics) and I are hosting a workshop on Visualization on the Web this Sunday (October 11) in Atlantic City as a part of VisWeek. So if you're in town, make sure you drop by.

We accepted topic proposals earlier last month, and those will be presented (briefly) during the workshop, and we'll break into discussion from there. It'll be an informal event.

Even if you didn't submit a paper or register, you're welcome to join. Everyone is welcome. There should be plenty of space.

Find more information on EagerEyes. Remember, this Sunday, October 11, 2:00-5:30.

Twitter shows trending topics, but it's for the entire user base. You can only see what everyone on Twitter is talking about at any given time. Trendsmap, on the other hand, shows trending topics by location. See what's trending in any part of the world in real-time.

The more popular a topic is, the larger it appears on the map. Click on a topic, and read the tweets that are coming in. For example, I'm looking at 'protest' right now in Pittsburgh. It looks like there's a protest happening at the University of Pittsburgh. There are also thumbnails for YouTube videos and Flickr photos.

Zoom into your region, and it gets much more interesting:

That is, if you live somewhere where something is going on. Otherwise, maybe not so much:

It's exciting times for data heads. The launch of Data.gov back in May got things jump started; San Francisco recently announced DataSF; and now New York is getting in on the party with the announcement of their own Data Mine (live at 1pm EST today) and the NYC Big Apps competition.
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As we all know, Facebook lets people update their friends with status updates, and with millions of users, that's a lot of data. Look at the aggregated data over time, and you could see some interesting trends.

The Facebook Data Team recently measured happiness in the United States based on these updates with a metric they call United States Gross National Happiness.
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In this graphic, we take a look at some data on how long you're expected to live.

Live in Hawaii and you just might live a little longer.

Hawaii has an average life expectancy at birth of 80.0 years. It's 72.0 years in Washington, D.C., the lowest life expectancy in the country.

Let's say you have this idea for a visualization or application, or you're just curious about some trend. But you have a problem. You can't find the data, and without the data, you can't even start. This is a guide and a list of sources for where you can find that data you're looking for. There's a lot out there.

Universities

Being a graduate student, I always look to the library for books and resources. Many libraries are amping up their technology and have some expansive data archives. Many statistics departments also tend to keep a list of data somewhere. Read more →