EXP

The Average Color of the NY Sky. Right Now.

By Craig Kanarick on June 22, 2011 4:34 PM | No Comments

This lovely little site charts the average color of the New York City skyline in real time, updated every five minutes. Created by designer Mike Bodge from his East Village apartment, the system takes a photo of NoHo and computes the average color of the sky and adds it to the site.

The past few days are currently archived there, so if you visit the site, be sure to scroll. It is all over the blogosphere, so the site might be a little slow, but Mike just tweeted that he's working on it.

107 Cocktails in 3 Minutes

By Craig Kanarick on June 17, 2011 3:08 PM | No Comments

I saw this attractive article in New York Magazine about cocktails featuring the colorful photography of Danny Kim and it made me quite thirsty. So, I took his images and GIF'd them. I hope you like it.

Swedish McDonald's Interactive Billboard Game

By Craig Kanarick on June 17, 2011 3:00 PM | No Comments

Ahh, those wacky Swedes.

about a fun interactive billboard in Stockholm that allows people to play Pong on a big screen for fun and prizes.

Gogo Inflight WiFi Coverage Map Fail

By Craig Kanarick on May 23, 2011 1:50 PM | No Comments

Could this data visualization be any less helpful? Apparently this map was in an Delta in-flight magazine recently. The map seems to indicate that Gogo service covers the entire country, and then some. At the bottom, however, it has a giant disclaimer saying the map is an approximation, meaning the entire thing is useless. So, what information are we left with? Gogo might be everywhere, but it also might not be?

And why only part of Alaska? Just to prove they are aware they aren't everywhere?

Thanks, Floating Sheep.

I haven't forgotten about you

By Craig Kanarick on May 5, 2011 7:14 PM | No Comments

This blog isn't dead, it's just very slow right now. That won't last as I have a lot of half-written posts to finish, I've just been a little sidetracked recently...

Japanese Earthquake Interactive Data Visualization

By Craig Kanarick on March 14, 2011 11:45 AM | No Comments

In what is sure to be a large number of interesting ways of viewing the latest tragedy in Japan, New Scientist has published an interactive data visualization of the history of earthquakes in Japan. Like the damage itself, the images speak for themselves.

Cardboard Bottles For Liquid Soap

By Craig Kanarick on March 9, 2011 9:44 PM | No Comments

20-year old non-toxic household products company Seventh Generation nudges the entire industry forward on Friday with the roll out bottles of laundry detergent made out of 100% recycled cardboard and paper and able to be 100% recycled.

I love the way this fits their mission to restore the environment. The bottle was designed with their Oakland-based Ecologic Brands and uses a whopping 66% less plastic than traditional packaging. It is constructed as a compostable cardboard shell that holds a plastic bag and sealed with a plastic cap. The bottle can be upcycled up to seven times. The detergent is also more concentrated I also love this quote from Peter Swaine, director of packaging, "It's an absurd idea to put laundry detergent in a paper bottle, but absurd ideas bring innovation to the forefront."

As an already satisfied customer, this makes me a more loyal one.

Porsche Unveils Electric Roadster

By Craig Kanarick on February 15, 2011 10:41 AM | No Comments

I just read about the new Porsche Boxster E, an electric version of their iconic sports car. Between Porsche, Tesla and others, it seems like a new wave of electric sports cars is coming, proving that all segments of the car industry and headed towards a cleaner future.

Who wants to buy me one?

The 2010 Feltron Annual Report

By Craig Kanarick on February 8, 2011 11:09 PM | No Comments

Design wizard Nicholas Felton has released his 2010 Feltron Annual Report, and as always it is great. Not so much about Nicholas directly, it is more a reconstruction of his father's life based on artifacts.

If only every news story was as well designed and information rich.

Interactive NBA Slam Dunk Contest History

By Craig Kanarick on February 2, 2011 8:05 PM | No Comments

The Knicks game is on and in the early not-so-exciting moments, I am turning to this really great new data visualization on Hoopism, Every NBA Slam Dunk Contest Video Visualization.

The graphics and information design aren't my favorite but this is a great example of the content being so compelling that is hardly matters. This is particularly well timed to go with the recent Bleacher Report article and voting site, Top 160 Dunks in NBA Slam Dunk Contest History With Clips.

Digital Skis From Wagner

By Craig Kanarick on January 27, 2011 11:02 PM | No Comments

While my friend Josh is off on mountaintops skiing, I am home with my kids making igloos. After 19" of fresh snow in the last two days in New York, I am wishing I was skiing. Especially with a pair of custom skis from Wagner Skis.

Here's the way it works: you spend a day on a pair of diagnostic skis with vLinks Racing Computers, tiny little things that record 6500 measurements per second. The vLink was designed to be used by pro racers, ski coaches and the like and can record up to 99 runs of data. Wagner crunches the numbers from the computers and creates a custom pair of skis, just for you, through ski length, width, sidecut, tip and tail shapes, camber and rocker, flex pattern, stiffness, and material layup. They even give you the option of designing the top graphics. If that's too much work, they offer a wide selection of amazing solid colors, wood veneers and artist-designed graphics. In order to use the vLinks for Wagner, you need to go to a place that has them and right now that means Surefoot Deer Valley only, but the company said it plans to have versions they can ship to customers later this season. If you are super hardcore, you can order them directly from vLinks for $800, although getting the data to Wagner is another story.

Two Awesome Bus Shelter Ads

By Craig Kanarick on January 26, 2011 4:04 PM | No Comments

In a previous post about interactive billboards, I wrote about some really nice installations in bus shelters. So far this year, I've come across two more that are worth mentioning.

The first is a bus shelter located in my home town, Minneapolis. Home to severely snowy and cold winters, local agency Collie + McVoy transformed a bus shelter into a giant toaster oven, complete with heating coils, to promote Caribou Coffee. I'm surprised there aren't homeless people living in it by now.

While this one got me excited, a much more interesting project is the one that Yahoo! has hosted in San Francisco. Called Bus Stop Derby, it is being promoted as a citywide challenge. 20 different bus stops have had 72" touch screens installed with four different games for passengers to play while they are waiting. The games can be played solo or against someone in another bus stop. Scores from each bus stop are tabulated in real time and at the end of the promotion, the winning neighborhood will win a concert with OK Go in that neighborhood.

Fed Ex's "Our Changing World" Data Visualization

By Craig Kanarick on January 19, 2011 12:10 PM | No Comments

FedEx must have spent a lot of money and time on this beautiful data visualization that allows users to explore the world through a variety of lenses. The experience is essentially a morphing map that scales countries to a particular size based on different data sources. The image above is a map of the world with the countries scaled to represent the number of new businesses (i.e. entrepreneurs) per capita. There are 21 different categories of information, each one having 3 different views with data from unique sources. My favorite? Beer imported per capita -- watch Africa disappear...

Who isn't getting into the interactive data mining game these days?

BBC Newsnight: Information Graphics

By Craig Kanarick on January 10, 2011 3:22 PM | No Comments

From a few months ago, BBC takes a look at the power of data visualization and hosts a dialog between David McCandless and Neville Brody. The video is 11 minutes long and spends a lot of time focused on the potential misuse of graphics, perhaps to increase some of the drama. It really isn't needed, as the discussion between the two designers is fascinating. Brody comes off as a crotchety old man, all bitter about where design has gone. McCandless seems thrown by the negativity and has a difficult time defending the field of infographics. Granted, his work isn't the most efficient or effective in terms of information design so it didn't surprise me that he couldn't defend his work, but I was more disappointed that he couldn't stand up a little bit more to Brody.

7 Billion People in Kinetic Typography

By Craig Kanarick on January 7, 2011 3:34 PM | No Comments

Check out this well done animated typography explanation of the population situation. 7 Billion is an year-long documentary series by National Geographic and based on this video alone, I certainly want to see it.

The Joy of Stats

By Craig Kanarick on January 7, 2011 3:09 PM | No Comments

Finally, we Americans can watch the amazing BBC show, The Joy of Stats. Hosted by guru Hans Roling, this hourlong documentary/editorial on statistics and graphics is compelling for anyone, even kids.

AIGANY / Data Visualization: Methods and Madness

By Craig Kanarick on January 7, 2011 11:54 AM | No Comments

Just as I start to "dig out" from the end-of-year madness, it starts to blizzard here in New York again. So I thought it would be an appropriate time to start posting on EXP again, especially when I saw a note about this upcoming lecture next Wednesday featuring friend and design hero, Lisa Strausfeld.

The AIGA site has a little fun with this one, using a numbered list of instructions as a description of the event. This is the first of three lectures in a series about data visualization and I'm sure all three of them will be great. New Yorkers, I'll see you there.

Isarithmic History of the Two-Party Vote

By Craig Kanarick on November 22, 2010 12:21 PM | No Comments

This is an amazing video showing the ebbs and flows of the voting public over the past 200+ years. The artist used county-level data and you can really see the spread of voting patterns.

This is a great example of how data visualization is good at telling stories.

EasyBloom Plant Sensor

By Craig Kanarick on November 10, 2010 10:05 AM | No Comments

The EasyBloom Plant Sensor is a simple device that gardeners can stick in the ground to digitally monitor the sun, soil moisture, soil fertility and temperature. By analyzing the data, the system can help gardeners understand exactly what plants would thrive in their gardens or what would need to be adjusted to get current plants to be more healthy.

The indoor/outdoor stick has a library of over 6000 plants with plant care tips and advice. This $60 gadget would make an excellent holiday gift for friends with green thumbs or those who want to have them. The company recently announced a collaboration with Black and Decker to develop a more advanced version of the product.

Hotel Replaces Room Keys With Mobile Phones via PSFK

By Craig Kanarick on November 9, 2010 11:55 AM | No Comments

In this article on PSFK, I learned about how the Clarion Hotel in Stockholm is using Near Field Communication technology to allow certain cell phones to be used as room keys.

I've always wondered why room keys still exist. There are plenty of RFID key systems for cars, why not use them in hotels? If my hands are full of luggage, wouldn't it be better if I could just keep the key in my pocket and the door opened when I got close?