Four things you should see if you are an infographics person

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You should visit these five links if you really like infographics, visualizations, visual narratives or however you call it.

10 significant visualisation developments: January to June 2011
Visualising Data

These frists months of 2010 has been really interesting for the graphics world: good works, tools, statements, discussions... Ten of the top worth-visiting liks of the year on VisualisingData.

22 free tools for data visualization and analysis
Computer World

Making graphics and visualizations is getting easier day by day (the quality of interest of those is another discussion). The technological barrier is falling down and now you don't even have to pay for licences. People got plenty of tools online, free and easy to use. From the ones by  the omnipresent Google  (Fusion Tables, Refine...) to others, independent but interesting like Impure.
Here you got a good list with a good bunch of them.

Visual pieces by Antonio Pasagali
lainformacion.com

Antonio Pasagali is Art Director at lainformacion.com, the news web I work for. He has published a couple of Visual Pieces, with really nice aesthetics, but also informative. Something different. And that's a good thing.
1. Pedestrians in New York
2. Madrid-BCN: train and plane

The functional art
Alberto Cairo

Alberto Cairo's book (called in spanish 'El arte funcional' and which could be translated as 'The Functional Art') has become famous before being in the shops. And now it's on its last steps before being released. By the moment, we know that it will be published between spetember and novembre, 2011, at least in spanish. And also what does Nigel Holmes thinks about it:

Welcome to Alberto’s world. Cairo has done it all here: history, theory, practice, examples. And he's done it brilliantly. It's the most comprehensive and sensible book yet on real-world information graphics; we won’t need another for a long time (or until he writes his next one!)"

Census: a great opportunity for databases and maps

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United States is not just the 'land of opportunities', but also the land of Open Data. From Spain, we are really jealous of how the government offers data in different lenguages and formats to be used and consulted by citizens and media.

One good example is the 2010 census: all kind of data about the population of such big and heterogeneous country is a very big opportunity to show what can we do with all that data and make it easy to access for citizens. Global and local, giving a general idea of the country, but also allowing people to check information of their own neighborhoods.

These are some examples of work with this information:
(If you know other interesting examples, just tell me in the comments of this post)


The New York Times
Mapping America: Every city, every block

I've talked about it separately. It really amazed me when I first looked at it. The different layers of information, the details, the fact that you can take a look to all the country, but also look for the data not just of your neighborhood but, in some cases, your own building!

Moonshadow Mobile
Censusmaps 2010: Washington, California...

It gives you the possibilty to go really deep and with many options, but only state by state (and just some of them). The creators of this technology think that what makes these maps different is the speed and the amount of data they can handle: "Our technology is software only and it is typically hosted in the cloud. As a result of our speed advantage we can work with much larger databases. Whereas others visualize 1,000 to 10,000 records in Google Maps we have visualized databases with over 100 million records. "

The Washington Post
Explore the 2010 Census

The Washington Post graphic is not as complete as the previous one, but gives you the option to compare the data with previous census. You could also seacrh for different visual stories on their main page of the census.

The Wall Street Journal
America in 2010

Although you can find different graphics of the census on WSJ.com,  they are not as easy to use as WaPo's or NYT. The good thing is you can reach the information of each county, with goes more local than WaPo's, but not as detailed as its neighbour, the Gray Lady.

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These are just some examples. Share in comments other interesting things if you know them, and I'll add them to this post.

Google and the writer who wants 'something beautiful and funny for the page'

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Google has announced a taxes infographic contest with a 5,000$ award at DataViz Challenge. Until here, everything's allright. Now, the problems.

The post title on Google's blog
Can you make tax data exciting?
Yes, Google is not asking for something intersting, comprehensible, clear, divulgative...no. Google's asking for something 'exciting'. As those writers who come to the infographics departments asking for something 'beautiful' or 'funny' because the 'page is boring. But now it's not that writer. It's Google asking.

Just for United States
In this time of globalization, where Google is one of the starring, it's precissely Google who creates a contest just for people 'physically in United States'. ???

Alberto Cairo vs. Google
As an example of what they expect Google show a bubble graphic. If Alberto Cairo finds it, Google should be afraid.

Via @rpicallo and Infosthetics

Lisa Evans, from Guardian Datablog, speaks about data journalism

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Here you are, courtesy of Medialab-Prado, a conference by Lisa Evans, from Guardian Datablog, on the BarCamp about data journalism organized by MediaLab Prado.

Enjoy.

From comments: This barcamp was organized by Pro Bono Publico and Access Info, with support from MediaLabPrado.