Nicolas Belmonte, a data visualization scientist at Twitter, visualized the change in tweet volume during Euro 2012. It starts with a streamgraph for an overall view, and when you click on a team you get a time series for each of that team’s matches. The selected team appears on top, and the team they are against is on the bottom. Goals are also marked adding context to the spikes.

I didn’t watch any of the championship and know next to nothing about soccer, but Belmonte’s piece is useful and fun to use. Would come again.

The electricity bill (or all utility bills, really) haven’t changed much over the years. It’s basically computer output. Power2Switch, a site that helps you compare electricity prices, took a stab at redesigning the barebones bill. (Don’t miss the comments in the FastCompany post.)

While a step in the right direction, the redesign still needs to go through the revision cycle a few more times.
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Voice producer Kuk Harrell works with performers like Justin Bieber and Rihanna to “make sure that the artist shines on the record.” The New York Times has an interactive that shows Harrell’s process and let’s you get in on the fun. He has the artists sing bits and pieces over and over again in the studio, and then he mixes and stitches them together. In the interactive you get to pick and listen.

Vulture illustrated the subtle changes in Louis C.K.’s face to express varying levels of discomfort. I only recently discovered him, but man, I’m glad I did. FYI: With the start of season three, the second season became available on Netflix, in case you want to catch up.

In the 1960s, the basketball uniform was about small, tight shorts and form-fitting tank top. It’s grown longer since then. Andrew Bergmann sifted through the archives and illustrated the changes over the decades.

The arm-length “shooter sleeves” that Lebron, Carmelo and Pierce sport on a regular basis are one of the most interesting of recent accoutrements. These covers can directly be traced back to former 76ers point guard Allen Iverson, who by legend wore one to conceal a controversial tattoo, but in actuality had bursitis in his right elbow. Somehow the sleeves caught on and are now believed to improve your shot. I guess I should get one.

I can’t wait until players are out there in full tights, and then as fashion always turns around on itself, speedos and thigh-high socks.

Information video designer Marco Bagni abstracted the meaning of life in his short video, Getting Lost. It doesn’t show real data, placing it in the genre of Chad Hagen’s nonsensical infographics, so this piece by Bagni is interesting not for the information it shows but how he used infographics as a way to express a message: “Getting lost is only way to find your own path.”

[Thanks, Nigel]

Last week, Australia released data for their 2011 Census. Small Multiples, in collaboration with Special Broadcasting Service, put the data to use and built an interactive that compares demographics based on primary language or location. Choose a language from the dropdown menu on both the left and right, and your selections are presented side-by-side. The graphics themselves are fairly straightforward, showing estimates of things like gender and household income, but the key is in the comparison, which provides a sense of scale to what would otherwise be a bunch of percentages.

While we’re on the subject of stars, developer Riley Davis modeled the ones in the zodiac constellations and color-coded them by temperature. He also labeled the constellations and included the celestial equator (the projection of Earth’s equator into space), ecliptic (path of the sun), and the sun, which moves in real-time. The interactive starts with a view from space, where the little blue dot is Earth, and when you release the camera, you see the stars from our point of view.

I was disoriented at first with the navigation but got used to it quickly. Movement of the mouse left to right zooms in and out, and movement top to bottom rotates the perspective. Feels a lot like flying through space. Well how I imagine it to be, at least.

When we look up at the night sky to gaze at the stars, we see small, glowing dots that we perceive almost as if they were drawn on a flat surface. However, all these dots vary in distance from us. View of the Sky by visualization developer Santiago Ortiz shows this third dimension of depth.

The constellations are placed on a sphere that you can zoom and rotate. This is an interesting view in itself, but select the perspective for absolute distance and magnitude, and you’ll see something completely different. It’s no longer a network that resembles a globe, and instead it morphs to a cloud of stars and randomness. Also see Ortiz’s first view of the sky that includes stars not part of major constellations.