Thursday, 19 June 2008

Animating mobile phone subscribers...

Ok, this is probably in the "how to sacrifice accuracy for eye candy" category, but it's still fun! Here is Mobile phone subsribers (statistics from UNdata) visualised using a proportional 3D mobile phone:

Mobile phone subscribers in 2003 (download KMZ). 3D phone from Mikeyjm/3D Warehouse. I'm using volume as the scaled parameter, which I think is more accurate than using area or height.

You can even change the colour of the cover... :-o

Animated version (1980-2004):


Download KMZ (NB! You need a quick computer!)

I've added a 3D mobile phone and a 3D person (both from 3D Warehouse) to the Thematic Mapping Engine, so you can make this visualisation yourself.

1 comment:

  1. Goulding2 July 2008 at 18:21

    I'd love to see a visualization of the Big Mac index (this data) using 3D burgers!

    BTW: I disagree that the 3D perspective takes away from the 'accuracy' of the data representation. The eye is extremely good at coping with relative sizes in perspective - especially when the 3D visualization can be spun around... However the color ramps definitely do help and the 2 techniques together make a very compelling representation.

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