something in the way

Google Map Maker is a simple tool that lets you draw your own map and share that map with others. The Pulse view lets you see how people are making use of that tool in real-time. On top is the Google Earth view. On the bottom is a zoomed in view of the actual edit. Just press play, and see how people around the world are using Map Maker.

It's a simple map that is of the same likeness as the Zappos sales map and the even older Twittervision, but somehow it's still fun to peek in to see what people are doing.

[Google Map Maker via @johnmaeda]

Hundreds of thousands of people immigrate every year, with some countries seeing higher rates than others. To compare and to gain a better sense of the number of people moving around, Carlo Zapponi created peoplemovin.

Each side is a super long stacked bar that represents international migration in 2010, and countries are in alphabetical order. Click on the left to see emigration from the selected country or click on the right to see where people have immigrated from.

I'm kind of struggling with the line lengths because the bars are so long. You're looking at migration — people moving from point A to point B — but a long line doesn't mean anything. The color scheme, which I think represents migration rates, is also not clear. So take it for what it is. It's still interesting to click around.

[peoplemovin]

OECD, with the help of Moritz Stefaner and Raureif, promote a well-being index beyond GDP in the Better Life Initiative:

There is more to life than the cold numbers of GDP and economic statistics — This index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 tpoics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.

Based on topics such as health, housing, and education, each country is represented with a flower, and each petal on a flower represents a metric. The higher the index, the higher the flower appears on the vertical axis, and if the flower metaphor is too abstract for you, roll over each flower to see the breakdown by bar graph.

The strength of the tool is in the level of interaction it allows you and the ability to create your own index by weighting factors how you see fit. For example, do you value health over all other factors? Weigh that more, and the flowers update accordingly.

Finally, you can focus on specific topics such as housing to see how countries rank in each area and information on what indicators were used to compute each sub-index. The environment index, for example, is based solely on air pollution levels, whereas the education index takes educational attainment and reading skills into account.

So whether you're interested in a specific country, topic, or a group of topics, the interactive tools lets you see world data from plenty of angles. How does your country compare?

[OECD Better Life Index | Thanks, Moritz & Jerome]

OECD, with the help of Moritz Stefaner and Raureif, promote a well-being index beyond GDP in the Better Life Initiative:

There is more to life than the cold numbers of GDP and economic statistics — This index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 tpoics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.

Based on topics such as health, housing, and education, each country is represented with a flower, and each petal on a flower represents a metric. The higher the index, the higher the flower appears on the vertical axis, and if the flower metaphor is too abstract for you, roll over each flower to see the breakdown by bar graph.

The strength of the tool is in the level of interaction it allows you and the ability to create your own index by weighting factors how you see fit. For example, do you value health over all other factors? Weigh that more, and the flowers update accordingly.

Finally, you can focus on specific topics such as housing to see how countries rank in each area and information on what indicators were used to compute each sub-index. The environment index, for example, is based solely on air pollution levels, whereas the education index takes educational attainment and reading skills into account.

So whether you're interested in a specific country, topic, or a group of topics, the interactive tools lets you see world data from plenty of angles. How does your country compare?

[OECD Better Life Index | Thanks, Moritz & Jerome]

Do you understand how time zones work around the world and when exactly you need to move your watch forward or back? Me neither. BBC News provides a brief history of time zones via interactive globe.

Theoretically, the world should be divide into 24 equal time zones, in which each zone differs from the last by one hour. But as the years have passed, the world has turned into a much more complicated place. Time zones are now much more irregular and sometimes seem positively eccentric, affected as they are by political, geographical and social changes in the real world.

Rotate the globe to see where each time zone lands. Some of the zones seem relatively straight, but even in some areas like the GMT-2 time zone, there's some crookedness. There must be some small islands there or something. It's either that or the Royal Observatory is fond of puzzles. No, there aren't any other options.

[BBC News via @kelsosCorner]

We learned the strategy to win Rock-Paper-Scissors every time, but does it really work? For the New York Times, Gabriel Dance and Tom Jackson give you your chance:

Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. Test your strategy against the computer in this rock-paper-scissors game illustrating basic artificial intelligence. Choose from two different modes: novice, where the computer learns to play from scratch, and veteran, where the computer pits over 200,000 rounds of previous experience against you.

Be sure to play at least five rounds, and then click on the button to see what the computer is thinking. In veteran mode, the computer searches its database for sequences that match your last five moves and its last five moves and then tries to predict what you'll throw next.

Are you good enough to beat the basic artificial intelligence?

[New York Times]

A Grammy win is worth way more than a little trophy and some short-lived fame. It's worth actual cash. As shown in this graphic by Wilson Andrews and Mike McPhate for the Washington Post, album sales two weeks after winning shoot up from two weeks before the awards show.

Last year, album sales only went up 56 percent for the Taylor Swift album Fearless, compared to a plus 891 percent bump for the 2009 winners, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant. However, considering the relative obscurity of this year's winner, Arcade Fire, I suspect a bump more like the latter.

[Washington Post]

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New gadgets, from Web-connected TVs, to smartphones, to Fax machines, always seem to start expensive and then decrease in price a few months later. We all know this. But by how much? Alicia Parlapiano of The Washington Post takes a look in this interactive. It shows units sold by year for different gadgets. Bubble size indicates average price.

Poor tape player. The Consumer Electronics Association didn't even bother tracking its sales after 2005.

[Washington Post]

• Where’s the Local Big Mac Price Data?
• Driving habits and gas prices shift into reverse
• How Does the Average Consumer Spend His Money?

In this series of interactive cartograms, FedEx shows our changing world (and I guess, how they are changing with it) through a variety of worldwide demographics such as access to mobile Web, growth, and happiness. Above is the cartogram for richest countries i.e. GDP. Choose a topic, press play, and the cartogram changes accordingly to match the current metric.

In case you're unfamiliar with cartograms, they're the same idea as choropleth maps, but instead of using color to represent a metric, the country areas are used. A caveat of choropleth maps is that large geographic areas inevitably end up looking more prominent even if their value is lower than that of a smaller country. A cartogram on the other hand will make even a smaller country more prominent if it has a higher value for whatever metric. The caveat with cartograms of course is that you can easily end up with a big blob.

For example, here's the cartogram for high-technology exports. Looking kind of blobby in Europe.

Have a look for yourself. There are quite a few other topics to click through.

[FedEx]

• Maps and Cartograms of 2008 Presidential Election
• Alternative to Cartograms Using Transparency
• The Geography of AIDS Around the World

Andrew Bell, Robert Hodgin, and The Barbarian Group just released LibCinder, a creative coding framework in C++.

It’s a cross platform, open-source project, very similar to Processing or OpenFrameworks, but with better memory management and OpenGL support. Features include standalone applications and screensaver creation, Cocoa touch support (iPhone, iPad), OpenGL texture classes, webcam capture support and full Quicktime support. Besides the tech specs, what can it really do?

For starters, the usual “Hello, Cinder” tutorial.

tip by Peter Kirn

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