While watching a video about the UK Museums and the Web Mashup Day, I came across ManyEyes.

ManyEyes is an IBM service for data visualisation. You can upload data and then visualise it in dozens of different ways (one of the nicest of which is Wordle).

For example, here is a clickable tree of the text on war memorials (data from the National Maritime Museum):

Or, one I created myself, a Wordle of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

I just spotted Enkin.

As you can see from the video below, it’s an Android application that combines Google Map data with GPS-and-compass positioning info, plus video footage from the phone’s camera.

It’s all very very clever. Three things to note about the cleverness:

1. In map mode, they use camera motion to drive the interface (i.e. no need for an accelerometer)
2. In live mode, they use accelerometer (and compass?) data to keep the camera view steady

3.In live mode, they use compass and GPS data to keep the ‘augmented’ data in the right place

P.S. Also see this bonus interview with the creators.
P.P.S. This is similar to the (defunct?) MARA project by Nokia research. More about that here and here.

Welcome once again to another spirited read-through of the screenplay that is the Cogapp internal blog. Let’s kick off scene one with a mash-up.

These boots were made for walking
Spotted by Ian.

A fabulous Google Maps mash-up (what, another one?) which lets you plan and calculate a route on foot. Simple, useful and nifty.

Get your pedestrian jollies at: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/

Shiny image fun in your very own browser
Spotted by Sam

Now a lot of us at Cogapp Towers are generally suspicious of super-flashy-yet-purportedly-useful browser plugins, but this one is pretty cool.

PicLens lets you zoom around a wall of photos pulled from sites like Flickr, Google Images or Facebook. It’s slick, and actually quite useful for image searching - we’re not just gimmick-mongering here.

Try it and you’ll see - flying around endless panels of images and videos is really quite addictive. You can even navigate through Amazon this way, which is quite an eye opener…

Oodles of Doodles
Spotted by Gavin

Always trying to organise meetings with people and can’t find a time that works for all of you? Then maybe you should Doodle it!

Doodle is a simple and easy to use online group calendar - think Google Calendars but without the fuss. For example:  if you’re trying to arrange a meeting with a lot of people, you send them a link to a calendar you have set up (which takes 5 minutes), and they tick the days/times they can attend.  When everyone has done this you can see which times everyone can make it and arrange your meeting. Particularly useful if you’ve got people from multiple organisations or departments.

Again it’s a simple but powerful idea, well executed. Doodle doesn’t do much, but what Doodle does do  Doodle does do well. Try saying that ten times quickly on a late Friday afternoon.

And finally…

Let’s be honest. We have lots of ‘and finally’ candidates on our internal blog. Too many to mention here, but here are a few tantalising whistle wetters…

Making movement complexity visible, spotted by Tristan - http://www.moframes.net/

An oldie but a goodie, spotted by Tristan - if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging.
Ah it gets better every time I watch it.

The legendary Johnny Lee returns with intriguing thoughts on flexible display surfaces, spotted by Joe - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSR_6-Y5Kg

And if you’ve really not got enough things to do today, spotted by Joe - 65 things that look like Pac-Man

And that’s a wrap, people. We’ll be back soon with more somethings from the Cogapp something (it’s late on a Friday, can you tell?)