Empires' Phases in 19th and 20th Centuries

      Pedro Miguel Cruz made an experimentation about showing empires' rise and fall in 19th and 20th centuries. He personally says that he can't call this neither information visualisation or information art, as he finds the graphics not too elegant and the data not too advanced. Since I'm not very experienced in this I can't say anything but to me it looks fantastic=) It's true it may not convey very advanced knowledge but it gives the essentials, and it's really cute. It could be a good way to study to history class from there, just to remember the names properly.

Keyboard Frequency Sculpture

      Keyboard Frequency Sculpture, a sculptutal data visualisation, shows the keys that are frequently used according to data from Wikipedia. The maker of this project is Mike Knuepfel, a recent graduate of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
      This is already an interesting idea, and he says that this project is still a prototype and he will add things in the future. I'm really curious what it will turn out to be like.

Visualisation Through Installation

     Currently United States has a rate of approximately 857 high school drop-outs per hour. That's really a serious number! The College Board, under its campaign "Don't Forget Ed!" set up a powerful installation on National Mall to urge the presidential candidates to put education to the top of their priorities.
     This installation is put together by 857 school desks that reperesent each student that drops out of high school each hour. Although computing doesn't have a hand in this project very much, I think this visualization is one of the most meaningful, brilliant and impressive visualisations. It's sending shivers down my spine!

History of the World in 100 Seconds (Accoding to Wikipedia)

     In Wikipedia, most of the event-based articles are tagged with geographic coordinates. Mainly using this attribute of Wikipedia, Gareth Lloyd, software engineer, and Tom Martin built "History of the World in 100 Seconds". Then they made an animation of it.
     The animation starts with the date 499 BC and continues until the year 2011. You can track the dates at the bottom right corner. In my opinion, it doesn't seem 100% accurate but who cares? It does show the essetial information, and if I got it right it's aim isn't to be 100% accurate in the first place, rather it's to make people to have a general idea about the world history. I liked the animation and the idea in general. In the end of the animation the modern world map appearing vaguely is another aspect that I liked.

If you want further information about this: http://www.ragtag.info/2011/feb/2/history-world-100-seconds/