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.

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.

Who wants to buy me one?

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

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.

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?

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.