Showing posts with label Interactive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interactive. Show all posts

March 18, 2020

COVID-19 Dashboard Tracker

Incredible COVID-19 tracker at: 
https://ncov2019.live/data

Developed by a 17-year old Jewish kid from Seattle. 

There is a page for data by continent, country, and state. 

And another tab with an interactive map of the cases. 

Also, a page of useful information from The Center for Coronavirus Information.

The information updates every minute by scrapping information "from reliable sources from all over the world."

I think it would also be helpful to add an aggregator of top news stories on the Coronavirus.

I find this to be a very simple, straight-forward dashboard to keep up with the developments of this virus. 

Thank you Avi Shiffmann--job well done!  ;-)

(Credit to Minna Blumenthal for sharing this with me)
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November 11, 2019

Artechouse = Art + Tech + House



This place was really cool in Washington, D.C. 

Artechouse = Art + Tech + House. 

Great immersive technology, art, music, dance, and light show. 

Highly recommend it!

This exhibit "Lucid Motion" was by Japanese artist Daito Manabe X Rhizomatiks Research.

They also had a nice augmented reality display. 

Had fun with the clan. 

Hope you enjoy!

(Credit Video: Andy Blumenthal)
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February 15, 2013

The Counterterrorism Calendar


The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) "leads our nations efforts to combat terrorism at home and abroad by analyzing the threat, sharing that information with our partners, and integrating all instruments of national power to ensure unity of effort."  The NCTC is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). 

Not since the playing cards used in the 2003 Iraqi invasion with the most-wanted identified on the cards have I seen the employ of such a common tool for sharing such important information--until now with the development by the NCTC of a Counterterrorism Calendar

Typically, pin-up calendars have been devoted to beautiful models, Dilbert cartoons, and areas of personal interests and hobbies--such as cars, sports, aircraft, boats, or whatever.

I was impressed to see this concept used for sharing counterterrorism information; really, this is something that we should be mindful of every day--it's about our safety and national security.

The counterterrorism calendar has both a website and a PDF download

The website has an interactive timeline, map, and terrorist profiles--so you can learn about terrorism by time and space and those who commit the atrocities. 

Timeline--you can view by month and day the major terrorist acts that have occurred--and many days have more than one terrorist act associated with it--and only seven days out of the whole calendar year have no terrorist acts listed--so for those who are focused on just 9/11, there is a whole calendar waiting for you to view. 

Map--the map allows you to see the home base and geographical sphere of influence of many terrorist organizations--17 of them--along with a profile of each of those terrorist groups. There is also a button on the bottom of the page to see all the countries impacted with victims from 9/11--there are 91 countries shown with victims from this single catastrophic event alone.

Terrorists--the site has a list of terrorists with their profiles, identifying information, what they are wanted for, and amount of reward offered, or whether they have already been captured or killed. There is also a list of the 10 most wanted off to the right side of the page--with a rewards of $25 million listed for the #1 spot for Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The downloadable calendar has this information in a 160 page color-calendar--with a wealth of information for a calendar format like this--it is so large, I don't think you could actually hang this calendar because no regular push pins could actually hold it.

So if you can pull yourself away from the stereotypical Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar, then you may actually be able to learn a lot about what our counterterrorism efforts are all about. ;-)

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August 14, 2011

Images, Alive And Profitable

"There are nearly 4 trillion images on the Internet and 200 million new ones being added each day," according to Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Luminate.

Luminate (formerly Pixazza) has the vision of making all those images interactive through image recognition algorithms and human-assisted crowdsourcing to identify objects and tag the images with content.
They "transform static images into interactive content," according to the Luminate website.

The way it works:

1) Icon--look for the Luminate icon image in the lower left corner of the image that means the image in interactive.

2) Mouse--mouse over the image to choose from the interactive image apps.

3) Click--click on the images in the photo to shop and buy it ("Get The Look"), share information (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, email), or navigate (click on contextual hyperlinks from Wikipedia and other sources).

According to Forbes (27 July 2011), Luminate already "has more than 4,000 publishers, 150 million unique visitors per month, and more than 20 million products catalogued."

The image-tagging platform provides context and information for consumers and revenue generating opportunities for producers--so it is a win-win for everyone in the marketplace!

By connecting end-user Internet images on the front-end with advertisers and commerce on the back-end, Luminate has found a way to integrate web-surfers and industry--no longer are advertisements on the web disconnected as pop-ups, banners, or lists from the Internet content itself.

Right now, there are apps for annotations, advertisements, commerce, and social media. Luminate plans to open up development to others to create their own for things such as apps for donations for disaster relief images or mapping and travel apps for images of places.

Luminate, as a photo-tagging and application service, is advancing our experience with the Internet by creating a richer experience, where a photo is not just a photo, but rather a potential gateway into everything in the photo itself.

In my view, this is a positive step toward a vision of a fully augmented reality, where we have a truly information-rich "tagged environment", where everything around us--that we see and experience--is identified and analyzed, and sourced, and where the images of the world are alive no matter how or from what angle we look at them.

Lastly, my gut tells me that Google is heavily salivating over where this company is going and future developments in this field.

(Source Photo: here)

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July 16, 2011

Undersea Internet Cables-See Them for Yourself

I've always been interested in maps, geography, and geospatial information systems (GIS).
Coming across Greg's Cable Map--I thought this is sort of idiosyncratic, but fascinating too.
This is an interactive map of our global undersea telecommunications infrastructure.
If you ever wondered how you were able to connect with someone anywhere in the world in split seconds (satellites aside--since we all don't have immediate access to that), here it is.
How it works: Either you can search the list of cables of the right, click on any one of interest and it highlights it on the map for you or vice versa click on a telecommunications link on the map and it bring up in the right-hand column the points of the cable landings and reference to more information .
Another cool feature, is the ability to display the telecommunications infrastructure from before, during, or since any period of time--so you can get a historical perspective of what the Internet for example looked like or didn't look like only ten or fifteen years ago. Can anyone say carrier pigeon? :-)
There is also the ability to click on the bottom of the map on the check boxes for either or both the active or future cable links to see where we are now ("as-is") and where we are going ("to-be") in terms of Internet connectivity.
Next time you read in the newspaper about a large-scale Internet outage like the multiple ones that occurred when undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean in 2008 causing outages from the Mideast to India, you can look it up here and see for yourself how "the foot bones connected to the ankle bone."
Enjoy and have a good weekend!

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July 15, 2011

An Infographics Treasure Trove

There is an amazing web site for creating, sharing, and exploring information visualizations (a.k.a. infographics)--it is called Visual.ly
There are currently more than 2,000 infographics at this site; this is a true online treasure trove for those who like to learn visually.
The infographics are categorized in about 21 areas including technology, science, business, the economy, the environment, entertainment, politics, and more.
I've included an example, from the Social Media category, of an infographic called The Conversation Prism developed by creative agency, JESS3.
As you can see this infographic displays the spectrum of social media from blogs and wikis to Q&A and DIY sites--it is a virtual index of social media today.
What I really love about infographics is that they can convey such a wealth of information in creative and memorable ways.
Moreover, there is such a variety of infographics out there--basically these are limited only by the imagination of the person sharing their point of view and their talents in conveying that information to the reader.
As someone who is very visual in nature, I appreciate when the content is rich (but not jumbled and overwhelming), and when it is logically depicted, so that it is quick and easy to find information.
In the example of The Conversation Prism, I like how it comprehensively captures all the various types of social media by category, color codes it, and visualizes it as part of a overall communications pie (or strategy).
To me, a good infographic is something you can relate to--there is a aha! moment with it.
And like a great work of art--there is the opportunity to get a deeper meaning from the visual and words together then from the words alone.
The shapes and dimensions and connections and distances and colors and sizes--it all adds meaning (lots and lots of context)--I love it!
I could spend hours at a site like visual.ly learning about all the different topics, marveling at the creativity and meaning of the information being conveyed, and never getting bored for a second.

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December 23, 2010

Anatomy, The Google Way

The new Google Body Browser (released 16 December) provides an incredible view into the human anatomy.

Here is the link to the download.

This is the a long way from the classic Anatomy of the Human Body by Henry Gray (1918).

I'm looking forward to seeing the hologram version some day soon.

All this may just be cool enough to make me want to go back and become a M.D.!

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