About the author

I ordered a treadmill from Amazon on 11.29.09. It was delivered on 12.9.09, and a week after the delivery I moved to a new place. That’s when I assembled the treadmill and realized it was not working. The display was OK, the timer was counting down, but the belt was not moving. So here’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of months.

Dec 29, 09:
I call Amazon and talk to Devine C. but am told that I cannot have it replaced because I’ve changed my address since the delivery. I should call the manufacturer and try to get it fixed. I call Merit Fitness about 3 times but due to the high number of calls, I am asked to leave a message and am reassured that I will be contacted within 24hrs. I am not.

Late Dec – early Jan:
I keep calling.

Early Jan:
Someone finally answers. One hour on the phone explaining what is working and what’s not. The representative says that they will send me some parts and have a technician in my region contact me within a week.

Design, Map, Programming

Update Feb 24, 2010: I just learned that this piece won a Best in Business award for creative use of online media from Society of American Business Editors and Writers. I want to thank all the participants who made this project possible. Cheers!

The Adversity Index, from msnbc.com and Moody’s Economy.com, measures the economic health of 381 metro areas and all 50 states. Each area is in recession, at risk, recovering or expanding. On this map you can explore changes in the four components of the index: employment, housing starts, housing prices and industrial production, each shown as a percentage change from a year earlier.

This map contains more than 350,000 data points. It was a challenge because we didn’t have appropriate database tools to support the map. We had to split the data set into five big chunks and merged them in Flash. I wrote a tool that allow loading data from different subsets and merged them into one data structure that was plotted on the map.

Click on image to view the map

This is a map I created recently for the Environmental Defense Fund. It shows buildings in New York City that burn dirty oil. The map contains information about 9000 buildings that burn either type 4 or type 6 oil. Both types are bad for the environment.

My biggest challenge with this map was the sheer amount of data it has to load, parse and plot. Fortunately, AS3 is fast. It is a pleasure to see the parser churns through thousands of lines almost instantly. Another factor that made my life much easier was the map framework I used. I want to thank the people at stamen.com and the developers of modest map for creating an amazing framework. With just a few tweaks I managed to plot thousands of points on a map.

It seems like the story got a lot of attention. It was mentioned by The New York Times and Daily News.

To view the map, please click here

Map, Programming

We learned and utilized many new technologies in this project. Unlike the Adversity index map where we didn’t have proper server-side tool to handle big data set and we had to use hacks, this project uses a brand new server-side tool to do the heavy lifting.

We built the server-side code using Django framework. This is the first time we are using this framework and it is awesome. It makes my life as a web developer much easier, especially when I was completely new to it.

For this project, we built a framework in AS3 that allows flash to communicate with the server and to make requests in real time. The framework makes it easy to parse responses from the server and deliver them to different parts of the application. With that, we are able to support deep linking, back button and breadcrumb.

Design, Map, Programming

I am particularly proud of the world map because we managed to create it from scratch in a day. Even better, I designed the code so that we could reuse the map again without any extra development time. That means editors can just plug in a new data set and the map is ready to go.

View the world map
View the U.S. map

Design, Map, Programming

I worked on this project a couple months ago. The data set was interesting and I had full control over how to design and implement it, which was a lot of fun. Because of the short deadline, I didn’t manage to implement all the little details for this map. But in the end, it turned out well.

Click here to view the map

I just got a couple of freelance projects, so I am offline for the next few weeks, maybe couple of months.

Also, just to keep things interesting, I managed to install my first super ultra cool lame app on my iphone :). So what’s the next step? Well I plan to create the next Google :P

I didn’t realize until recently how small the field of data visualization and information graphics actually is. I have been following the blogs of most people in this list. And even after searching around, I found only a few more.

I have been fortunate to know, work with and learn from many from this list. I hope that one day, I will get to meet with the rest.

If you know of anybody who is not on this list, please let me know.

Updated Jan 5, 2009 – Many thanks to Zachary Forest Johnson from indiemaps.com and Tom Carden from Stamen design.

Click on image to see full size.

I remember watching the Apple’s ad and thinking it was funny. Most of us are somewhat tired of the “I am a Mac, I am a PC” ads, but from time to time, Apple makes one that’s worth watching.

One of Microsoft’s “I am a PC” ads made it to the list. These ads remind me how old school and traditional Microsoft is. I am still not sure if it is a good thing or not.

via Nielsen Wire