Ben Shoemate's Notebook

There seems to be a commercial market emerging around the idea of automizing the creation of infographics. Toronto based start-up vizualize.me [vizualize.me] is currently developing an online application that can automatically translate any online LinkedIn profile into an online infographic. In particular, the new service aims to overcome the issue of reading overly long or highly complex resumes by showing the same information in a more readable and attractive way. The start-up has been coding the online application only since the last 2 months, and is currently still in private beta.

First peeks behind the beta service show how this can become particularly useful for those that like to change jobs often, have a high amount of skills or know quite a lot of languages (unfortunately, my current own resume is not that compelling). The infographics are automatically generated through logging in with LinkedIn credentials. One can still edit each individual item, change the 'theme', 'colors', 'fonts' or the 'background' image. 'Themes' actually include different visualization techniques, which currently include a horizontal or vertical bar graph slash timeline and a more risky arc diagram-style approach.

While the idea seems certainly useful, one would certainly wish for the availability of more subdued visual styles, in particular for those people who appreciate more classical visual styles when applying for high-end, important jobs. I also foresee some critical comments on the color palette for the 'language' world map.

Notably, Visual.ly is also betting on the future of semi-automized online infographics, as it is currently in the process of launching an online infographics authoring tool.

Natural Gas [geblogs.com] designed by Information is Beautiful (slash David McCandless) is the latest addition to G.E.'s already impressive collection of interactive infographics, which already includes works like Pentagram's CFO Outlook and Contrasting the Drivers of Innovation.

The Natural Gas infographic illustrates various factual statistics about the scarcity of this natural resource, and includes a view on how many cubic meters or years that are left before the availability of gas will run out, an overview of the top 7 countries with reserves, yearly producers and biggest consumers, and contrasts the availability of natural gas against that of oil and coal.

How do you shoot a remote and fast moving ship back in the time 'computers' existed out of gear assemblies, rotary disks, sprockets, chains, cams, differentials, and a very good knowledge of algebra and trigonometry?

If a how-to explanation of the analog computer does not interest your geeky mind, then consider: how do you explain complex mathematically-driven machinery using simple infographic animation and narration, back in 1953 (and so, no After Effects, you know...)?

In short, the 50's era training film series explains how a mechanical computer was used to aim guns on a ship. Compared to today's digital computers, it almost looks like Rube Goldberg's abacus, but in it's day it was a game changer that proved devestating. Watch the series of (school television like) videos below.

Via boing boing and Engadget.

See also Walt Disney Mars and Beyond movie and Powers of 10 movie.

Social Compare [socialcompare.com] sees a conceptual gap between social networking and visual size comparison. The online tool enables everyone to easily compare the size of all sorts of artefacts, like objects (e.g. iPad vs. iPad 2), persons (e.g. Obama vs. Sarkozy), countries (e.g. USA vs. France) and the like. All visual comparisons can be saved to be shared on social networks or be embedded directly on blog post or website. In addition, size "tables" allow comparison of things that have no visual counterpart, such as Internet browsers, car performance statistics or sports and activities.

Ultimately, Social Compare believes it can become an new social community to create and share easily interactive and collaborative comparison tables. More information also watchable in a short introduction movie below.

See also Sizeasy - Visual Size Comparison