Storming of the Brain
My big mega research project is about non-profits and interactivity so I had planned on doing a data visualization on something related to that field. Part of my research is using information visualizations to make non-profits more interactive, along with reality worlds and social networks.
I started looking up statistics and found data on people’s carbon footprint, trends in animal shelters and global deforestation. I also looked at topics really unrelated to my research project such as obesity trends, hurricane patters and sleep cycles related to graduate students.
While I know that I should probably delve further into my research topic but I really want to take a break from that and explore something different. I’m leaning toward hurricane patterns or increased non-profits related to child obesity.
People in class were having difficulty in using Google’s version of information visualization. It seemed that the data would not be recognized or consistent. I chose to work on another project that I’m behind on during class time so I have yet to work with the program. I wonder if there is a more user-friendly data organizer because if iMedia students can’t figure out something on Google, there probably isn’t much hope for the average user (not to tute our own horn 
I like the look of 3D maps, like Time Magazine’s population density for the United States and maps/graphs that show or tell a story like Symphony #5.
Just searching through Google I found an alternative for Google’s motion charts and data visualizations. It is called Ferret, it is an interactive computer visualizations and analysis environment designed to meed the needs of oceanographers and meteorologist analyzing large and complex gridded data stets. It’s specific but some of the work completed using it is really interesting.
So basically, I still don’t know what type of information I want to analyze. I will probably go back to someting about my rearch topic in the end, but it was fun to consider looking at somehting completley different.
Signing off…
