3,892,179,868,480,350,000,000 or more simply put 3 sextillion, 892 quintillion, 179 quadrillion, 868 trillion, 480 billion, 350 million is the number of new digital information bits created in 2008 according to EMC Corporation. This figure calculates to 487 billion gigabytes, with EMC Corporation predicting that these figures will increase by five times in 2012.

The vast increase in the amount of data being generated, is down to the emergence of the “Internet of Things”, literally a device connected to the Internet or as Google’s Marissa Mayer defines as “Ubiquitous nano-sensors”. These devices are producing increasing amounts of data about the behaviour of the user interacting with the internet and the environment in which they’re doing so. So there’s a lot of data out there to visualise.

The process of creating a data visualisation starts with a question and meanders its way to construct a story that provides a clear answer to our question. Over the next few paragraphs I’ll briefly outline the 7 stages involved in creating a data visualisation.

Acquire
The first stage involves gathering some data and depending on your question this can be simple process or rather complex. Numerous public data sets are available for download on the web e.g. the Humane Genome (150 Gigabytes) or Weather measurements 1929-2009 (20 Gigabytes) are available from Amazon.

Parse
The data, which has been acquired, needs to be converted into its most useful format. This will involve tagging each individual piece of information for its intended use.

Filter
Once the data has been parsed, it will then need to be sorted so that any data not relevant is removed and/or normalised. This way all values are converted into a useful range.

Mine
The next step involves mining the data with math and statistics in order to extract a pattern that will form the basis of the story that will be visualised.

Represent
Within this stage the decision is made to the form that best suits the data. This could be a horizon graph, coloured circled placed on a map, or even a simple bar chart.

Refine
The decision made at the previous stage will influence refinement stage, where graphic design is added to help exemplify the changes in particular data. For instance, the coloured circles placed on a map could be transformed into particle clouds above the map, with denser areas representing areas of higher value.

Interact
The final stage adds interaction to the visualisation so that the user is able to control and explore the data. This can be as complex as filtering the data to create a new representation or just zooming in and out.

Here are a few interesting examples of data visualisation:
- Night vision maps of the WikiLeaks Iraq Casualty Data
- Cities from around the world traced using geotags and timestamps from Flickr and Picasa to determine the speed at which photographers traveled the landscape
- NetFlix rental patterns examined, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, in a various American cities
- The 372 songs sampled in All Day by the band Girl Talk visualised
- Flowing Data will visualise data about your environment, lifestyle and yourself using Twitter

Data visualisation has the ability to convey an insightful piece of information in an imaginative way, be in it print, web or even mobile. Marry this with a flashy or simple design and data visualisation can be an effective way to communicate a branded message.

Philip Gilbert continues to attack 150 meters from the finish in Malaga Stage 3.

The Xacobeo-Galicia team exit the final corner of cobblestones in Triana during 2010 Vuelta a España, Stage 1: Sevile – Seville Team time trial.

The Team Sky warm up in Triana during 2010 Vuelta a España, Stage 1: Sevile – Seville Team time trial.

Francaise Des Jeux team ride along the cobblestones in Triana during 2010 Vuelta a España, Stage 1: Sevile – Seville Team time trial.

The flash team recently went along to the Adobe Creative Suite 5 launch party to learn about some of the new features we can look forward to in Flash Player 10.1.

One of the common moans users have about Flash Player is the affect it has upon their computer’s processors which results in their laptop battery being drained. Flash Player is based upon a frame rate, and the frame rate determines how many times code is executed per second. Imagine if you have your web browser open with 10 tabs of the same Flash movie running. Even though you can only see one tab, all 10 Flash movies would be running at say 31fps, subsequently draining your laptop battery. Now with Flash Player 10.1 the player automatically detects whether a Flash movie is hidden in a tab and automatically reduces its frame rate to 2fps.

When working with just English it is easy to overlook how different languages display text information. For instance Japanese text is read vertically, while Arabic text is read from right to left. Previously this would require a clever code, however the text engine in Flash Player 10.1 has been vastly improved, adding the ability to change the direction and orientation of text.

Recent releases of Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer added ‘private browsing mode’, which when activated, enables the user to browse the Internet knowing that any data about sites and pages they have visited will not be saved by their web browser. Flash Player 10.1 now automatically checks and adjusts to the web browser’s ‘private browsing mode’, so any Local Shared Objects which can store information about a user’s visits in Flash sites will not be remembered when private browsing is turned off.

Finally, have you ever been watching a piece of full screen video when after a couple of minutes your screensaver appears? Flash Player 10.1 now has the ability to disable your screensaver whilst your video is playing or buffering. Great stuff.

The lecture theatre was sold out, with a screen set up outside for people who couldn’t find a seat, I found this strange considering you had to pay for that privilege. Anyway Adrian Shaughnessy sat and interviewed Saville for well over the 2.5hours planned, asking less then 8 questions but this was due to his natural ability to talk and talk some more. Predictably a large portion of the questions and discussion focused on his work with the music industry and Factory Records, however this must be more then a formality for him, he went onto state, “Music covers are not graphic design, they do not communicate anything” and, ‘No one should be designing record covers after the age of 30’. Surprisingly honest and funny.

In the later part of the interview Shaughnessy asked Saville to talk about his latest job role, Creative Director of Manchester one which he was awarded in 2004 and for me this was the most interesting part of the lecture. This topic raises numerous questions for instance, how go about branding a city? How do you measure Saville’s success, is it by the equity added to the city from external investment, do you compare it to the likes of Bilbao, Barcelona and Berlin and or is it measured internally by the improvement made to lives of people in Manchester. Although a large percentage of his work is forever associated with one city and one sector that being Manchester and its musical heritage, it a credit to Saville that the ideology which forms the basis of the branding in Manchester  the ‘Original Modern city’, pays homage to the cities birth out of the industrial revolution.

In my opinion this lecture was best when Saville wasn’t discussing his days with Factory Records but rather the branding of Manchester or being provoked to talk about by a topic. I wasn’t sure which D&AD video of the lecture to embed, since there isn’t a video of him discussing the Kate Moss logo and Philip Green which was very funny. The video below although slightly clichéd is of him being incited by the audience to discuss Banksey, Damien Hurst and the over blowen art market of London. 

Related links
- Peter Saville’s biography at the Design Museum London
- A collection of D&AD videos from the Peter Saville lecture on Vimeo
- Mr Doobs Unknown Pleasures Flash visualizer
- D&AD blog post on the lecture
- Eye Magazine article on the Peter Saville lecture
- Blueprint Magazine article on the Peter Saville lecture
- Creative Review article on the Peter Saville lecture

It wasn’t long ago that I was sat reading an article in Creative Review about the demise of creativity within music videos. The article cited a number of obvious reasons for the demise, the reduction in the amount of budget made available to artists following the rise of downloading music and the associated fall in profits within the industry. The second point was the dilution of the sphere that music videos sit within via the rise in number of music television channels, coupled with youtube and their attempted to host almost every music video. After watching the following video I thought it contrasted nicely with the Creative Review article and showed a little creativity and rumor. 

Directed by Dougal Wilson
Production by Colonel Blimp

Related links
- Creative Review article: The state of music video
- BBC article: YouTube aims to show music videos
- Smashing Magazine: 29 Brilliant music videos
- Radiohead – Spinning Plates video

As part of my knee rehabilitation I have noticed a slight increase in the amount of Bacon Butties in my diet. The cause of the increase I put down to the bi-monthly physio sessions which seemed to be followed by a Bacon Butty in the hospital canteen. The irony of getting a bacon butty with 6 rations for £1.50, which is pretty much a pack of Bacon is not lost on me as numerous nurses, doctors and consultants dash in getting breakfast. I even took part in a failed attempt to visit the regionally famous Top Nosh cafe in Kingswood.

Anyway today I took the short walk along Bristol docks to visit a childhood memory Brunels Buttery. I’m not to sure how young I was when I visited but the Bacon Butties were big with chunky white bread, coffee served in glass mugs and seagulls flocked to the smallest crumb. I’m glad to report nothing appeared to change for me, therefore below is a photo of my bacon butty from this morning.

Related Links
- The Ultimate Bacon Sandwich
- Brunels Buttery on Flickr

One issue that has risen is the high number of requests made to the Last FM api in order to get the country specific data. The choice was between using the 27 European Unions member states, or the 49 countries which exist geographically within Europe. For the moment I’ve gone with the later, and ignored the 1.4mb of requests needed to complete this, but due to the Last FM api there is no other way of fetching the relevant data. A consequence of this is that Europe looks far more busy and the chart below is more populated.

The above image shows the chart generated after each of the European Countries data has been collated. I was slightly frustrated that the feed from the Last FM api isn’t live or updated on daily basis, instead I believe its updated weekly. I have uploaded the above build of Mapping Music and can be viewed here.

Next
- Individual country charts
- Comparison charts
- Improve the interface
- Look into a chart timeline.