Tuckwai’s blog post on visualisation made me remember this technology that I have been looking at for a long time, but never had the time to delve deeper into it other than downloading the Java libraries.
Processing. An amazing piece of software used by companies such as Yahoo and others. Capable of a variety visualisation stuff.
Nice screensaver type effect
MTV-type effect
Its recently (about 6 months ago) been ported to Javascript. See more here.
Came across this article some time back that talks about the US Army taking a page out of Google Maps and Wikipedia. Essentially, its a “MapPedia” kinda application, where soldiers are able to annotate on a map events and things relating to those different areas, allowing easier taking over by their incoming replacement when they end their tour and leave. It allows for the new soldiers to learn things that otherwise would have been lost when the old-timers left - things such as where is the most dangerous road junctions and so on.
It is essentially “Documentation” for soldiers, presented in a highly graphical (I love visualsation stuff), and easy to use manner.
Not very radical from our standpoint, but considering that this is the army, it is still pretty interesting because there are many other “traditional” industries out there today that can use applications like this in their work.
Can you think of another “traditional” industry that can benefit from Web 2.0 technology?
Of course, to get a “traditional” industry to adopt a new way of doing things would require a business process change, AKA B.P.R (Business Process Reengineering), but that is another challenge altogether.
