In a follow up to his McDonald's map, Stephen Von Worley of Weather Sealed maps the dominating burger chains across the United States. McDonald's obviously has a stronghold in a lot of areas but not all of them. Most noticeable is Sonic Drive-in with over 900 restaurants in Texas alone. Personally, I'm rooting for Carl's Jr. and In-n-Out.

[via We Love Datavis]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

[Thanks, Canna]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

FloatingSheep, a fun geography blog, looks at the beer belly of America. One maps shows total number of bars, but the interesting map is the one above. Red dots represent locations where there are more bars than grocery stores, based on results from the Google Maps API. The Midwest takes their drinking seriously.

Of course there are plenty of possible explanations for the distribution. Maybe people get all their food from superstores like Walmart in the red dot areas, so there are fewer gigantic stores than there are small local bars.

Then again, the FloatingSheep guys did their homework and found, according to Census, that the number of drinking places in those red dots are really skewed compare to the average. So it's also possible that area of the country just likes to drink a lot.

Anyone who lives in the area care to confirm? I expect your comment to be filled with typos and make very little sense. And maybe smell like garbage.

[Thanks, Michael]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

Open data is great, but it's useless if you don't know what to do with it. Sunlight Labs, a group focused on using technology to support open government, recently released ClearMaps. It's an Actionscript framework for interactive cartographic visualization.

In addition to giving designers and developers more control over presentation the project aims to address some of the common technical challenges faced when building interactive, data driven maps for the web. ClearMaps is designed as a lightweight, flexible set of tools for building complex data visualizations. It is a framework not a plug-and-play component (though it could be a starting point for those wishing to make reusable tools).

It's still in the early stages, but developers will want to check this out I am sure.

[Thanks, Kevin]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

ITO world, who you might remember from a year of OpenStreetMap edits, come back to the map visualization to show the efforts of an impromptu community and Crisis Mappers to produce the most complete and accurate map of Haiti following the earthquake.

From the ITO blog:

Each flash represents a new edit into OpenStreetMap, and this visualisation is a vivid picture of how much work was contributed by volunteers, following the quake. First the primary and secondary roads (green and red) are added and then smaller residential streets and many other features such as the blue glowing camps of displaced people that emerge.

Watch the mapping frenzy unfold below.

[Thanks, Christopher]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

Update: I had scheduled this post for next week, but apparently, Data.gov.uk launched today. The site isn't loading for me right now though. I guess they weren't prepared for traffic.

Data.gov, a catalog of US data, launched last year. Now it's the UK's turn. Well, not yet. But soon. Data.gov.uk is still under lock and key, but it has granted access to some developers. Ito Labs, the group behind mapping a year of OpenStreetMap edits posted screenshots of their maps that show vehicle counts (above).

Here are some comparison maps between 2001 and 2008, by vehicle type.

Once Data.gov.uk is up, it'll be interesting to see how it compares to its US counterpart. Even more interesting will be the projects that come out of it.

Despite all the broohaha over Data.gov, not many useful projects (or datasets) come to mind. Can you think of any? There's still a long way to go from both sides of government and developer.

[Thanks, Oliver]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

I'm admittedly not very good with historical precedent, but I think we can all agree it's important to know about the work those have done before us. It makes your own work better and lets you appreciate what others do more (or less).

To that end, Zach of indiemaps has a fine roundup of the very first thematic maps. The first known choropleth map? That would be Charles Dupin’s from 1826 (above).

How about the first dot density map from Frère de Montizon in 1830?

Check out indiemaps for more. Also find a complete history of data visualization here.

[via TomC]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

Unless you live under a rock inside a cave in the remotest area in the world, you know a huge quake struck Haiti on Tuesday, and much lies in ruins. The New York Times just posted some before and after satellite images, and it's a horrible thing to see. Buildings gone. People gone.

It pains me to think about what if that were to happen to me or my family.

To this end, I'm donating all proceeds from World Progress Report orders, along with this month's FlowingData revenues, to UNICEF's relief efforts. The Report, after all, is an effort to relate to the rest of the world. It only seems fitting. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, I guess, but at least it's something. As they say, every little bit counts.

Again, I'm taking orders for one week - through January 21. Do some good and get something good too. I'm including How America Learns with all orders now. Buy a print now.

Or if the World Progress Report just isn't your thing, you can donate directly to UNICEF.

I mean, seriously, there are 27,000 of you + me. We can make a big difference together.

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

Some movies are popular everywhere. Others are popular only in certain regions. The New York Times, in a nice team effort, maps rental popularity by zip code for large regions in the US.

Select a movie and get the maps. The darker the region, the higher in rental rank on Netflix. Regions are colored if the movie is in the top 50. The above, for example, maps the popularity of Wanted.

Browse a little more, and you'll notice some interesting patterns. Look at this split in Washington for Frost/Nixon.

Then here's the same region for Lakeview Terrace.

I bet there are some demographics that correlate strongly with that divide in movie interest.

There are also movies that are popular - except in the city centers. Paul Blart: Mall Cop anyone? I'm guessing no if you live in the city, unless you live in Los Angeles. I suppose you need a more refined palette to understand the complexities of a fat man falling down. For the record, Paul Blart is in my rental queue.

Great job, NYT. I think I just spent a good hour browsing this one. How's that for engaging data? Give it a try for yourself. Can you find any interesting patterns?

[Thanks, John]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order

The Known Universe from the American Museum of Natural History shows a view of the universe, starting from the Himalayas and quickly moving out to the edge where all is black and scary - made possible by the records in the Digital Universe Atlas.

Naturally, the above video draws comparisons to the well-known Powers of 10 video (below), but both serve different purposes. One teaches a mathematical concept while the other is meant to draw in visitors to a museum exhibit. Both are awesome.

[Thanks, Rich]

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World Progress Report - 4 days left to order