E-mails. News. Facebook. Wikipedia. Do you feel ever feel that there's just too much information? Do you struggle to keep up with important issues, subject and ideas? Are you drowning in data?
In this age of information overload, a new solution is emerging that could help us cope with the oceans of data surrounding and swamping us. It's called information visualisation.
The approach is simple: apply the rules of visual design to information - make information into images, rather than text.
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Today, there's huge amounts of data out there. Visualisation helps spot important patterns in this data that might otherwise be missed.
Already governments are seeing the potential. The American and Australian governments are fast democratising their data and releasing it for free to the public. As an added incentive, they're offering massive cash prizes for the best visualisations. The UK government plans to follow this example in December by opening up all its data for public perusal. They feel it could improve accountability and transparency.
A couple of tools are mentioned:
+ Wordle
Generate your own word clouds from text your provide. Free.
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