World Sunlight Map Watch the sun rise and set all over the world on this real-time, computer-generated illustration of the earth's patterns of sunlight and darkness. The clouds are updated daily with current weather satellite imagery. The Mercator projection used here is one way of looking at the spherical earth as a flat map. Used since the 16th century for navigation, straight lines on this map can be used accurately as compass bearings but the size and shape of continents are distorted. Also available is a semi-realistic view of dawn and dusk from far above the Earth, a look at the moon, and information about how this works.
Etude : les Français se méfient de Facebook et Twitter, mais pas de Google L’Ifop associé à « Enjeux Les Echos » a publié « Le rapport des Français à Internet et aux entreprises 2.0 », une étude établie à partir d’un échantillon de 1009 personnes représentatives de la population française. Résultat : les français semblent avoir un rapport à internet digne du syndrome de Stockholm. Ils sont 86% à considérer qu’internet est indispensable et 95% à juger qu’il facilite leur vie quotidienne. Autre statistique paradoxale : si 78% des français jugent qu’Internet est « une bonne chose pour l’économie », quand on leur demande de juger les entreprises 2.0 individuellement, ce ne sont pas du tout les mêmes résultats qui ressortent. Deuxième pan de l’étude, les craintes liées à ces entreprises. Pourtant, ces degrés de crainte semblent être en décalage face au danger effectif de ces réseaux. Twitter : le désamour de l’immédiateté Twitter a été amplement accusé, notamment lors des attentats du marathon de Boston, de permettre la diffusion d’informations erronées.
Early adopters vs the Mainstream: Google Insights points out web Intro to Google InsightsI have recently been playing around with the insanely useful Google Insights for Search product. You should definitely try it out if you haven't. It's basically Google Trends on steroids, and shows you a ton of data on any search you try. An SEO wizard's dream, basically. It's described as: With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. Basically you put in keywords and it give you pretty charts. Navigation searches and geo-locationOne useful query to try is to search for your favorite website - like "gaiaonline.com" and specifically target it towards the US. Although unscientific, it tells you a bit about the location of the people who use the website, since logically the folks in states where the product is popular would tend to search for it quite a bit. This is exactly what I've done below... The graphs for Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Netvibes, Skype, Techcrunch, Twitter, and YouTube
Infographic of the Day: It's a Small World, Afterall If you're wondering how "close" two places are, a geographic map doesn't help much anymore. If the airports are good--or if there's a bullet train nearby--hundreds of miles might as well be down the street. Point being, "distance" is now really a function less of geography, than of the transport networks we've invented. Which is why researchers at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, and the World Bank, created this gorgeous map. They first created a model, which calculated how long it would take to travel from a given point, to the nearest city of 50,000 people or more; the model includes rail, road, and river networks. Then they plotted these results on a color coded map: The brighter an area, the closer it is to a big city; the darker it is, the further out it is. As the New Scientist reports: Plotted onto a map, the results throw up surprises. Check out the New Scientist's entire gallery of 11 different maps.
[Débat] C'est quoi la TV-connectée ? TV connectée, Smart TV, Social TV, tout autant d'expressions permettant de faire le lien entre télévision et Internet. Les modes de consommation de l’écran prennent un virage identique à celui que prend la technologie vidéo : ils évoluent en même temps que la multiplication des outils. Augmentant le nombre de possibilités de consommer l’information, les émissions et les films. Mais qu’est-ce que cela change en pratique ? Dernièrement une enquête Mediamétrie révélait que les tendances de l'année 2012 se composaient de deux principes : la "fragmentation des usages et la transversalité de ce mêmes usages sur les écrans (tablettes, ordinateurs, TV connectée, mobiles et tablettes)". D'autre part, avec 47% de foyers équipés de TV qui disposent d'un téléviseur connectable à Internet (Smart TV, TV par ADSL, console de jeu), la prochaine étape ne serait-elle pas une utilisation quasi systématique de deux écrans différents pour un même programme ? La télévision ? Rep a sa Inspecteur Derrick
Map of the internet Many large datasets contain data that describes the relationship, or connection, between two or more entities contained within the data set, and many tools are now available for plotting graphs and network diagrams when presented with data that has been structures in a suitable manner. (A graph is a mathematical structure that can be used to describe these connections in a formal, and easily represented way. In a graph, 'nodes' are connected to each other by 'edges' in either a directed way (a link that goes from one node to another, but not vice versa, such as "A is the parent of B') or an undirected way (the relationship is 'symmetrical' - the M1 motorway connects Leeds to London, and equally connects London to Leeds).) For example, the IBM Many Eyes visualisation toolkit has a network diagram visualisation that will plot when presented with a set of paired data elements. Here is a map of the internet, circa 2003 that shows the connections between different internet routers.
NASA Creates World's First Global Forest Map Using Lasers Image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon Scientists, using three NASA satellites, have created a first-of-its-kind map that details the height of the world's forests. The data was collected from NASA's ICESat, Terra and Aqua satellites. The latter two satellites are responsible for most of NASA's Gulf spill imagery. The data collected will help scientists understand how the world's forests both store and process carbon. While there are many local and regional canopy maps, this is the very first global map using a uniform method for measure. Image by NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio/Chris Meaney The laser technology called LIDAR was used to capture the data. "LIDAR is unparalleled for this type of measurement," said Michael Lefsky of the Colorado State University, responsible for capturing the data. The map is based on data from more than 250 million laser pulses collected over 7 years. But what about the carbon?
Visualiser dix générations de partages en ligne Dans cette vidéo, Jake Hofman, computational social scientist au Microsoft Research lab de New York nous présente Viral Search. Il s'agit d'un nouveau moyen de naviguer, rechercher et explorer le contenu diffusé sur les réseaux sociaux : en cherchant parmi des millions d'éléments partagés et des milliards de mentions de ces éléments, le logiciel qu'il a mis au point permet d'analyser comment un contenu passe d'un internaute à l'autre. Lorsqu'un contenu se répand de façon virale, il est transmis d'utilisateur en utilisateur, certains jouant davantage que d'autres un rôle de relais d'influence. Viral Search décompose donc ces transmissions en "générations" de partages, et permet de visualiser toutes ces données en temps réel. Il est possible aussi de visualiser l'ensemble des publications d'un utilisateur de Twitter, classées selon leur viralité (la taille du cercle) et le nombre de générations de partages qu'elles ont suscité (les variations d'intensité autour du cercle central).
OpenStreetMap, les routards du web #1 : A la carte ! «Comment peut-on passer de 100 000 à un million de contributeurs ?» C'est l'une des questions ambitieuses qui ont été débattues, ce week-end à Amsterdam, dans le cadre du State of the Map 2009. Pour la troisième édition de son grand meeting annuel, le projet OpenStreetMap veut sortir de l'ombre. OpenStreetMap , sorte de Wikipédia de la cartographie, est un projet un peu fou qui tente depuis 5 ans de redessiner le monde sous Creative Commons, rue après rue. Sa communauté œuvre d'abord par idéologie. Convaincue que les données géographiques de la planète devraient appartenir au bien commun et non aux agences qui les ont relevées pour les exploiter commercialement (Ordnance Survey au Royaume-Uni, IGN dans les pays francophones...), elle encourage les internautes à effectuer leurs propres tracés et à les publier sous licence CC by-sa . Et comme toute réutilisation des contenus propriétaires de Google Maps, Yahoo! Les pistes de La Plagne sur OpenPisteMap Lire la suite. Camille GÉVAUDAN
Global Water Supply Chart [PIC] 10 Meme Paintings to Class Up the Internet [PICS] In 1838, photography was a crazy new fad, and images of rare paintings were soon widely distributed for people all over the world to see. Sound familiar? Today, images have similarly spread across the Internet. This concept of democratizing art , once put forth by theorist Walter Benjamin, is the inspiration behind artist Lauren Kaelin's paintings — well that, and the Ikea monkey meme. Called " Benjameme ," Kaelin's series of paintings each feature a different meme or viral star. "When I first saw the Ikea Monkey, I knew I had to paint him. To Kaelin, her paintings are like the reverse of Benjamin's theory: Instead of democratizing art, she says she is taking a widespread, mainstream image and "creating an aura or an original where none previously existed." "Benjamemes, aside from being a place of pure appreciation, is an opportunity to recontextualize these sensations as art objects and ultimately question why," Kaelin explained. Images courtesy of Lauren Kaelin
USGS Global Visualization Viewer This Is the Perfect Pinterest Picture, According to Science | Wired Business For the past year, a Philadelphia-based startup called Curalate has been stalking Pinterest, amassing a database of millions of images shared on the picture-collection hub, plus information on how often those images were shared, liked, or commented upon. The Curalate team, including a computer vision PhD and a dedicated in-house data scientist, recently did some intensive number crunching on that database, sampling 500,000 images and distilling from them half a dozen or so characteristics that seem to distinguish popular Pinterest images. Then, at our request, they identified one ideal picture that best combines these characteristics. And that image is at right. It’s from cooking show host Paula Deen, and it’s called “ Aunt Peggy’s Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad .” Curalate, which helps companies optimize and monitor the images they post to Pinterest and Instagram, has a vested interesting in figuring out what Pinterest users like.
Mapping a World of Human Activity With the world networked on an unprecedented scale, and the global population hitting 7 billion only weeks ago, we are living in a uniquely interconnected era, creating new opportunites and dependencies. It's the result of millenia of exploration, travel, exploitation, and innovation, and the Anthropocene, meaning “the new human-dominated period of the Earth’s history,” is a term coined in 2000 to describe this epoch. A Cartography of the Anthropocene is an effort by global education organization Globaïa to map this epoch, illustrating the various ways that global humanity connects and is interdependent. Anthropocene Mapping from Globaïa on Vimeo. Limited time only! Help us celebrate version 2.0 of the Library of Things Toolkit by chipping in $100 and receive an advance print edition. A Cartography of the Anthropocene reveals the degree to which all of humanity is interconnected and interdependent. Electronic Networks Across America Electronic Networks Across Africa Paul M. Paul M.