Category Archives: Timelines

Timelines: time travel in popular film and tv

August 26, 2009

Timetravel in popular film and tv
Here’s a visualisation of time travel plots in various films and TV programs. I had a lot of fun doing this!

It was particularly cool to highlight potential plotlines for “meta movies” where time travellers from different plots could meet and paradox it out. Charlie Kauffman are you reading this??

(By the way, I allowed myself a +1 / -1 year fuzz around the paradoxes. So knives away nerds!)

This is a straight data visualisation, rather than information design. That is, it’s not particularly useful, nor useable, nor meaningful. The inspiration was the coolness of the idea, really. I was excited to see what shape all the plots would make, and whether it could be shaped into something beautiful.

What I really love about this image, though, is the idea that this information has never been seen before. Despite the fact that it exists, in some way,somewhere, wrapped in various plots, it’s never been given form. I have to say, it was a joy to untangle it all :)

Big thanks to talented designers Alice Cho and Dominic Busby for their invaulable contributions. And Jeremy MacLynn for essential art direction.

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Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Fun, InfoVisualisation, Movies, sci-fi |
 115 Comments

More Truth About Twitter

August 14, 2009

If The Twitter Community Were 100 People II
Revisited If Twitter Was 100 People with some interesting new data

sources: Sysomos: Inside Twitter, Sysomos: Twitter’s Most Active Users, Pear Analytics Twitter Study
Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, De-Hyping, Media, News, Simple, Statistics, Web, twitter |
 112 Comments

Patterns in the Group Mind

August 7, 2009

I’ve been playing with Google Insights. It’s a great toy. It measures ‘search intensity’. The number of searches being made for a certain term.

Off the back of the recent timeline of global media scare stories, I got curious about what searches actually look like.

For example, the search “violent video games” reveals a very distinct pattern.

Google Insights search:

Why that distinct pattern? If you add the dates, it clarifies things:

Google Insights search:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

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Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, De-Hyping, Fun, Graph, Group MInd, Media, Visual Journalism |
 34 Comments

Mountains Out Of Molehills

August 4, 2009

Mountains Out Of Molehills

Watch out! A timeline of global media scare stories.

source: Google News | see in hi-res | download an A4 PDF
Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, Health, Media |
 33 Comments

The Death Of The Music Industry

August 3, 2009

Very good infographic from the New York Times conveys the dwindling death knells of the music industry. Analysts give it 10 years.

The Death Of The Music Industry

(This is slightly poorly labelled IMHO. Years go across from left to right. And where’s the colour?)

Also posted in Music, Visual Journalism |
 40 Comments