Google has put together this fascinating look at the growth of Android between October 2008 and January 2011. Spots around the world light up when an Android-powered smartphones get activated. It’s fun to watch significant spikes light up the map when specific phones released into the market. See how the launch of Motorola’s Droid and others affected the growth of Google’s open-source platform in the visualization embedded above.
[Via AndroidCentral]
An intern at Facebook named Paul Butler was interested in what he calls “the locality of friendship”; he wanted a visualization that would show which cities had a lot of friendships between them. He sampled about ten million pairs of friends, combing that data “with each user’s current city and summed the number of friends between each pair of cities. Then [he] merged the data with the longitude and latitude of each city.” The image above is the result, and this was his initial reaction:
The blob had turned into a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well. What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn’t represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships.
Pretty incredible, huh? Just by combining data points between friend connections on Facebook he was able to recreate a unique map of the world (though Russia and China are almost totally absent). The white areas on the “map” represent cities and towns, while the blue streaks highlight the relationships between them. If you’re interested in learning more about how this was constructed, head over to Butler’s blog post; there you’ll also find a super hi-res version of the visualization. FYI, it makes for a visually splendid desktop background.
[Via Facebook]
Zebra Imaging specializes in making holographic images, and their latest prints really know how to impress even the most skeptical “Is 3D our future?” individual. In the video embedded above you’ll see a holographic map (or “ZScape”) of Seattle. The company uses a wide array of digital source data and renders the data into tens of thousands of images which are the recorded using laser light onto a film-based holographic material. As you can see in the demonstration, a full color 360-degree viewing range can be seen under a simple halogen or LED light source, no special 3D glasses required. The prints are extremely durable and are designed to be rolled up and even marked on. The sheer amount of detail in the holographic maps is quite remarkable. The company has manufactured over 8,000 images utilized by the US military overseas for visualization and defense planning applications, but also cater to anyone who wants a 3D image in holographic form. Surprisingly their pricing options aren’t wildly expensive; $1,500 for a 12” x 18” print and their largest print size 2′ x 3′ goes for $3,500. Look after the break to see a “net engineering” hologram.
[Via Engadget; ZebraImaging]
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