The Billion Dollar-O-Gram 2009. The latest version of our fabled treemap of billion dollar amounts.

All the data and more billion dollar amounts: http://bit.ly/bndollar

A little context

This image arose out of frustration with media reporting of billion dollar amounts. That is, that they’re meaningless without context. But they’re continually reported as self-evident facts. 500 billion for this war. 50 billion for this pipeline. Literally mind-boggling amounts of money.

So here we’ve scraped reported figures from The New York Times, The Guardian, and other news outlets and visualized them as a treemap (?). So you can see in one place figures that would otherwise be scattered across multiple news reports.

(**Sorry it’s taken me so long to update this image from the original version. I’ve revised and updated all the figures. Sourced some new numbers. And researched new ideas suggested by visitors. Thanks all!**)

The oil spill is now on track to be the 3rd worst in history, depositing the equivalent of 22,000 cars worth of oil into the sea every day.

• The NYTimes have done a much better interactive graphic
• The Oil Spill superimposed on your home

More info and our data in this online spreadsheet: http://www.bit.ly/InDeepWater

Data: http://bit.ly/IntNoOnes

Note: Roll over the main image to see the countries.

Review the changes we’ve made to this image

(They’ve run the image a bit small. Here’s a hi-res on my Flickr)

Here’s the data http://bit.ly/polldancing too. It has a load of extra info going back to 1987.

Happy voting!

Data here: http://www.bit.ly/InDeepWater

What colour is happiness in China? Or good luck in Africa? Or anger in Eastern Europe? Are any colour meanings universal across cultures and continents?

A visualisation of the meanings of different colours in different cultures by David McCandless and AlwaysWithHonor.com.

• EXTRA A short photo story about how a version of this image ended up as the 91st and final cover design of our book, Information is Beautiful. Yes, 91 versions!
• HELP We’ve painted with a pretty broad brush. So there’s likely to be local variations or glitches. So if you spot any, or have you have references and sources for other colour meanings around the world, please send them over or comment below.

If you like this image, you can order an amazing full-colour print of it.

Much was proclaimed about how these new laws would protect musicians and artists revenue and livelihoods.

But how much money do musicians really get paid in this new digital marketplace?

This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. (Thanks to Neilon for pointing that out). I’ve taken his calculations and added a few more.

As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of. Some are even secret. Last.Fm’s royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension. (If you can explain it to me, please get in touch)

Note: these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs). The full spreadsheet of data does though. You can see all the numbers and sources here:http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

If you have any experiences, data or royalty statements to share, please post below!

Recent controversy about the budget of the BBC here in the UK made me curious about its spending. Here’s the BBC-o-Gram, a visualization I created for the Guardian Datablog, exploring the costs of running one of the biggest broadcasters in the world.

See the visual. Explore the data.

Do they provide good value?