Ganesh Swami

What’s the best way to show a time series? A static plot only goes so far, and it’s actually very bad for presenting long timelines. Fortunately, designers have come up with creative uses of rich platforms such as Flash for interactive interfaces. All of these interfaces enable “zooming” to capture the level of detail.

Google Analytics

The new Google Analytics platform uses elements from Google Finance. You can click and drag a “window” to focus on a period of interest.

British History Timeline

BBC recently released an interactive Flash program to explore British history from the Neolithic (nothing much to see here) ages to today. This is very useful to our history discussions we have often in the lab.

Google Timeline View

At a conference last week, Google releases a couple of new interfaces to its engine. The timeline view plots the frequency of occurrence of search keywords. (I was talking to a friend about nanotechnology last week, and used this feature to show him when the hype peaked.)

While browsing through various tutorials on typography, I came across the “right” way to use bullets. I’m not too sure about using this style though. Indenting bullets is more commonly seen in print and on the web, and attempting to use the right style will definitely stick out (for the wrong reasons.)

Jon Hicks has a quick introduction to various typography terms. Have you ever found yourself wondering what line-width, em and serif were? Or what font is appropriate for headings and content? Then, this presentation is for you. His presentation also has a list of related links.

I was surprised to find out that Lucida Grande is the default font on Max OSX. The default font in Keynote is Gill Sans, so I assumed it was same throughout. Gill Sans is one of my favorite fonts.

I can never forget Helen Keller’s quote:

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

I come across so many things in the world that are just beautiful. I’ll try to post some of my experiences in this newly created category. It’ll mostly be pointers to things other people have created.

[I'll avoid the philosophical question about good science being art.]