The Guardian has created a fine interactive timeline app covering pro-democracy events of seventeen countries starting December 2010 through December 2011.

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MoveOn.org is promoting a video of Robert Reich, chairman of Common Cause (one of among many of his titles and positions) that uses graphic recording to explain in eight steps, how private equity firms work.

Video Link

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Last Wednesday, 05/17/2012, Ezra Klein, in the Wall Street Journal, included a couple of good charts on the U.S. federal debt.  Mr. Klein is trying to parse out what the term "spending-driven debt" means.

It's unfortunate that the data and facts which these charts illustrate don't pertain to what such a term means.  My point being that terms and expressions that loop back upon themselves as a moralistic principle ignore, dismiss and even refute facts with rightous indignation. 

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Politilines, from PERISCOPIC, has created an interactive app that allows you to draw connections of the words used in Republican Primary debates.

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In Winner-Take-All Politics, Hacker and Pierson show the difference of income growth for the wealthy compared to 99%.  The dark green line shows the income trajectory for the top 1 percent since 1970, while the light green line shows the bottom 90 percent. Click the orange triangles to learn about critical turning points that helped create the skewed system we have today.

Click here for the interactive infographic  from Moyers and Company -

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From Buckfire & Buckfire in Michigan, comes an infographic about Student Bullying in the U.S.

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from Stateline, the Pew Center on the States

http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/infographic-a-turning-p...

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This past Sunday's NYTimes, 05/06/2012, had an article identifying the nine swing states that in all probability will determine the 2012 presidential election:  Colorado; Florida; Iowa; Nevada; New Hampshire; Ohio; Pennsylvania; Virginia; and Wisconsin.

The article linked to a great interactive map that allows the reader to create their own scenarios of how the electoral votes could fall out.

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The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

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A good example of how a simple graphic aids in learning something new.

Think of something you have written about lately and add an graph, image, doodle, etc. as a visualization of the main point(s) that you are presenting. 

http://agile101.net/2009/09/08/the-difference-between-waterfall-iterative-wat...

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Gini-coefficient of inequality: This is the most commonly used measure of inequality. The coefficient varies between 0, which reflects complete equality and 1, which indicates complete inequality (one person has all the income or consumption, all others have none).

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMD...

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from  Richard Darell  www.bitrebels.com

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to visualize Twitter in a whole different way? I am not talking about a new client on which you use Twitter, no. I am talking about a whole new way of visualizing your connections and the things they share with you. Well, VIZoSPHERE is exactly that and more. Its intended use is to visualize your networkthrough the topics that your followers and followings are sharing and are influential about.

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"In may 2011, Imano conducted a survey of two thousand iPad users in the UK."

48% ?!?  Which Internet connected device do you spend the most money with?  48% !?!  More than Laptop and Computer combined?  Granted, this is a survey of iPad users, but considering the short time the device has been on the market it's impressive that it has become the vehicle for commerce for nearly half of its users.

http://idea.imano.com/2011/06/uk-ipad-usage-infographic/

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This tech will lower the bar of entry in the application of pictures for many of us visual thinkers.

from GIZMODO 06/22/2011

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Today Google announced a new Gmail People Widget to provide contextual information about the people in your address book from within Gmail.

Everyone's got something to say about it - CNET, TechCrunch, Mashable, TechCrunch, LifeHacker, Techmeme, thenextweb, ...

I'm trying to keep abreast of the developements that provide visualization of social networks, ie. widgets that present generalizations of these structures: Facebook's Social Graph and LinkedIn's Maps.

Interactive infographics will add dimension to our understanding of the nuance and ambiguity of data, information and social connections.  The challenge is to maintain integrity of such a systems to deliver transparency and accountability.

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My thanks to Henry Brown for posting these links on govloop.com, both of which are from ComputerWorld.

22 free tools for data visualization and analysis and the accompanying Chart.

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Clicking about, looking for infographics on the U.S. budget deficit, I came across the second part of The New York Times interactive infographic, Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget.  NYT published the puzzle on 11/13/2010, which I recall, but I didn't see the follow up of a week later, How Twitter Users Balanced the Budget. 

Not a scientific sampling but a good example of informing and engaging a citizenry on a complex issue, "more than one million page views, and more than 11,000 posted Twitter messages about the puzzle, most including their own solution".  And the Times had several good accompanying pieces on the subject and exercise including a transparency piece, Behind the Times Deficit Project.

I'd like to see a mashup of Meetup, Study Circles, and a Games For Change mobile app, that generates actual recognition and street cred like the buzz a YouTube video gets for going viral.

NYT Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget, 11/13/2010

NYT How Twitter Users Balanced the Budget, 11/20/2010

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More resource for the equation of addressing wicked problems and civic engagement...

While sitting at Whole Foods, downtown Austin, TX, having coffee and getting to 'inbox zero' I discovered that just north of me the ISOJ2011 was going on.  Went to the link to find that it's on livestream.com/isoj2011 along with captures of the previous sessions.

Online journalism has become an integral part of building the link between transparency and civic engagement.

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MJ Broadbent, #VizThink, introduced an engaging presentation by Steve & Todd Cherches, who took us on a two-hour journey that challenged VizThink NYC members' visual interpretations, visual communication styles, and was just downright fun. These guys are full of energy and know how to push those visual buttons.

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Voting is over - the winner of the first Reinhard Mohn Prize has been selected! 

Over the past four weeks, 11.600 citizens in Germany were invited to select the winner for the Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011 out of seven finalists. Voting is now over and the winner has been selected.

In view of this year’s subject - democracy and participation - the Board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung decided that the winner of the Reinhard Mohn Prize should be selected by a representative sample of citizens in Germany. 11,600 participants of the BürgerForum in 2008, 2009 and 2011 were therefore invited to cast their vote. For this purpose the web-platform www.abstimmung-rmp2011.de was created. Via this platform the citizens could access short descriptions, case studies and films to gather information about the seven finalists. From February 21, 2011 to March 23, 2011 a total of 72% of all invited citizens cast their vote for one or multiple projects (approval voting).

The winner of Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011 is: Participatory Budgeting Recife, Brazil.

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