Visualizing data: Examples

Jennifer Okamoto, our crack Web editor for Lifestyles at The Dallas Morning News penned this note today:

This weekend, I got to spend some time on my favorite website, TED.com, where I watched this video by Jonathan Harris, an artist and computer scientist who reorganizes the information we post on the web in unusual ways. In it, he explains two projects he’s working on.

One is We Feel Fine, which searches blogs for the phrase “I feel” and organizes every sentence with that phrase by emotion, age, location and more. The site offers an interesting look at the global mood at any given moment. (Right this second: lucky, panicky and fat.)

Another is Universe, which turns current events into constellations of words, which you can sort by person, event, place, etc. For example, see at a glance who Bill Clinton was talking with in a given week, where he was, and that he took Saturday off.

Both are cool, but even better is that it helps me understand our work as singular points of data, and the interesting ways that data can be used. So when you blog, fill in those keyword and category blanks. Make sure your headline is SEO friendly. Who knows how your words could be used to help people out there?