Map of Moon Exploration - How Far Did Armstrong and Aldrin Walk?
Image from Strange Maps (source from NASA)

Good data visualization should convey a simple message to viewers. Quite often I see examples of information design that are overly complex or focus too much on presentation than communication goals. I think the mistake is that these designs fail to tell a comprehensible story, or to say, lack of a central idea that explains the purpose of the data.

This is probably why Map is such a unique and compelling form of communication. Not only it visualizes the relationships between elements, but also it represents one’s mind. It is the journey behind the lines and numbers that fascinates people who love to explore.

You can spend hours on this site if you like maps as much as I do.

Link: Strange Maps

Something as simple as this makes life a little more enjoyable.

Harvard Graduate School of Design (Previous Site, Art Direction by Jenna Park)

Cabengo is a New York City-based creative studio whose clients come mostly from the art and the academic fields. I had the opportunity working with them on projects for Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) and Coleccion Cisneros Foundation during my early career as a web developer and a Flash designer.

I really learned a lot. I still remember the time selecting the one homepage image in a pile of hundreds of photos from the client, days tweaking the fonts and a series of 6 hour brainstorm meetings on site interactions. It is probably the most professional and sophisticated team I have even worked with.

Thanks again Hillary and Jenna, if you happen to see this post.

Ideo.com - Screen capture

IDEO’s new site is a little tricky to navigate, but the magazine-style layout really shines here with powerful shots of the wonderfully designed products. Hands down one of the most visually intelligent web designs I have seen in a long time.

Link: Ideo.com

Muxtape.com (an online service that allows users to upload mp3s and create digital mix tapes) was shut down yesterday citing problems with the RIAA, and I just found out why Pandora.com (a popular personalized internet radio service) has also decided to pull the plug:

Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies.

Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures.

As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million, Westergren said, a level that could doom it and other Web radio outfits.

Having listened to the lecture podcast Music Artists Go Entrepreneurial (mentioned in my earlier post) , I think I got a good picture of what’s happening between the music industry and the online content distributors, and how the artists, the real content owners, are trying to bypass them both using various social media tools. It seems ironic to me that the fight is more about the ownership of the Internet than the content itself.

Link: Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its ‘Last Stand’

Related Article: Playing Whack-A-Mole With The Free Music Crowd

Related Article (Update): Missing Muxtape? Try 8Tracks. It’s Better

Since his international debut album New Awakening in 2003, Japanese beat maker DJ Mitsu the Beats has been collaborating with big name artists such as Little Brother, Kev Brown, Dwele, Lyrics Born, Rich Madina in the HipHop scene and received worldwide recognition and supports from producers like DJ Spinna, Pete Rock and BBC Radio1’s Gilles Peterson. Selected by URB Magazine in 2004 as the only Japanese in “NEXT100″ DJ list.

Here are some of his early remixes, still sound refreshing today.

Image from DJ Mitsu the Beats MySapce Page

==Playlist 2008.08.18: DJ Mitsu the Beats Remix Serie==

01 Intro/Get Money (DJ Day/Slum Village) - Summer Of Serato: Special Live Mix
02 Do Right (feat Rich Medina) - New Awakening Remixes Part 4
03 Ain’t Right (Iverse/RJD2 & Lyrics Born) - Explosive
04 So Ma Theme - Sound Manuevers
05 I Don’t Know (Steppah Huntah) - Things About Us EP
06 Marinheiro So (Frankie valentine) - Marinheiro So
07 After Midnight - After Midnight (7″)
08 Take Notice - Take Notice (7″)
09 Make It Better (Lone Catalysts) - Square Binizz
10 Negative Ion (Sa Ra remix) - New Awakening Remixes Part 4

A series of weekly lecture podcast provided by Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Speakers include Larry Page (Google), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sue Decker (Yahoo) and leaders from various industries such as web2.0, biotech, venture capital, academic and entertainment.

I especially enjoyed the latest episode on Music Business Entrepreneurship with Quincy Jones III, Chamillionaire, MC Hammer, and Mistah FAB. The content is very informative and honest.

Link: The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series

The technology blog TechCrunch has a recent post on Startup Presentation Tips quoting the email from Jason Calacani’s mailing list (the founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs and Mahalo). It caught my attention as the topic is relevant to my work and it’s also very useful in many real-life situations.

Other than tips such as “Show your product within the first 60 seconds”, or “Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do”, I find this particular one amusing:

9. How to handle questions you don’t know the answer to

a) take a moment to think about the question. You can even say “Hmmm… that’s a good question. Let me think about that for a second.” Folks appreciate a little consideration when someone takes a question.

b) if you don’t have an answer be honest and say you don’t. There are many ways to say this including: “I’m not really sure, I’m going to have to think about that for a bit and get back to you,” or “I’m not sure to be honest. What do you think?”

c) feel free to think out loud and brainstorm with the person. You can do this by saying “I’ve never really considered that. Perhaps you can expand the question a little and we can explore it right now.”

d) if you’re not sure of the answer you can always say you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it. “I’m not sure how we would deal with a sudden spike in the cost of bandwidth, we would have to collect more information and answer that question down the road. It is a manageable risk factor I suppose. ”

The worst thing to do when you don’t have an answer is b.s. the person. No one has an answer for everything, except a b.s. artists. So, feel free to say you don’t know–folks find it refreshingly humbleand honest.

Link: How To Demo Your Startup

This is not completely new. Many years ago I heard the hype from friends about this mind-blowing installation (some call it motion sculpture) piece showing at SIGGRAPH 2001, made from a material called Ferrofluid, a type of magnetic liquid that can morph from fluid to solid via magnetic fields.

I have never seen it in action until catching the interview with the artist Sachiko Kodama a few days ago. “Morpho Towers” is one of her latest projects. It is simply beautiful.

Link: Sachiko Kodama’s Website

Link: More Projects from Sachiko Kodama (Japanese)

A mini banner ad project made in 2004, for a friend who was working with Sony Taiwan building their internal site.