From stock exchanges to the LHC Grid

The SmartMoney.com website has a very interesting applet called "Map of the Market". Through this tool users can watch the performance of hundred stocks at a glance. Each colored rectangle in the map represents an individual company. The rectangle's size reflects the company's market cap and the color shows price variation (green means the stock price is up; red means it's down). The companies/rectangles are also organized by category (Energy. Telecom etc.).

However, SmartMoney's map is based on Dow Jones and NASDAQ exchanges. International investors can take a look at FINVIZ.com, where companies are grouped by stock exchanges around the world.

A similar concept but applied in a different field is GridMap. In a computing Grid infrastructure it shows the availability of each resource center (a.k.a. Grid site) federated to the Grid. In the example below - captured from CERN's LHC Grid - the rectangle's size reflects the amount of CPUs from each site while the color show the computing cluster's status: green means it is up; red means it's down (i.e., not working).

Currency Macromaps

The Financial Times website offers a curious way of visualizing exchange rates. Inside the "Markets data" section (http://markets.ft.com/ft/markets/currencies.asp), there is a link called "Currency Macromaps". It is a world map showing the losses and gains of several currencies in comparison with a predefined one. For instance, in the screenshot above the currency to be compared was set to UK pound. Users can see more details on the last change by moving the mouse pointer over the countries. It's worth a try!

A "real" bookstore

If you love books certainly you like the experience of visiting real bookstores, spending afternoons wandering the shelves. The Zoomii website tries to replicate this experience in the online world.

Actually, the bookshop works as an interface to Amazon.com. Visitors can zoom in and out among several virtual shelves before picking a book. This is a nice example of using real world metaphor in e-commerce websites.

World cup calendar

Encouraged by my colleague Daniela Brauner, I'm starting a new series on Information Visualization.

The website MARCA.com - the digital version of MARCA, one of the most popular sports newspaper in Spain - published an outstanding world cup calendar!

It offers 4 different but interconnected views: by date, teams, venue and phases of the competition. Each one is displayed in the center of the screen, which looks like a stadium.

Try it at: http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario.html