Interesting or unusual examples of visualizations:

(please add your own favorites in the comments below)

Trendalyzer -  this software was created by gapminder.org. Google acquired the Trendalyzer software in March 2007 and it is now part of Google’s visualization api. You can see it in use at: http://www.gapminder.org/world/ or a description of Trendalyzer on wikipedia. Here’s a video of Hans Rosling presenting at TED using Trendalyzer.

MySociety.org has created some superb interactive maps that use simple sliders to interactively display how commute time ranges intersect with home prices – all compiled from public data. The map itself was created by Stamen Design (also producers of the Digg Labs visuals) 

Share of consumer spending – The New York Times has an interesting breakdown of consumer spending.

3D Via – offers a library of 3D designs (owned by Dessault systemes, a PLM company)

Perceptive Pixel – has a terrific touch interface product for visualizations. Good presentation of it at TED. And a YouTube demo.

Writing on toast – Product concept of messages burnt onto toast.

Movie box office – Interesting chart of the popularity and later decline of movie hits

Baby Names – dynamic chart that plots baby name popularities over time.

Cutaway View of an RV (login req’d) – a great NY Times visualization that gives you a virtual magnifying glass which provides an interior view of an RV. 

TheyRule – A look behind the scenes at many larger companies – bills itself as a peek at the “ruling” class. 

Image Synthesis – Microsoft demoed some interesting technology which can synthesize images on flickr into a 3D model. 

Google Maps – now has a new feature for their visualization of specific local addresses (go to the page and then click on “street view” to see it), much like Amazon’s search engine did, they have street level images which allow you to see footage of actual storefronts and move back and forth to view storefronts and buildings on individual streets (even a 360 degree view). Here’s a good video depicting street view in action. This one is a farce.

GeoCommons.com – is billed as the geographic version of swivel or manyeyes. The site is currently down for construction, but the company’s blog is here (includes a few screenshots). 

Twitter Twist – See this article. Twitter twist lets you visualize trends over time on twitter (sort of like google trends and Facebook Lexicon do).

ScoutLabs.com – is like twitter twist and google trends except they do this commercially. Here’s their demo and their blog. They’re trying to answer the question about what people/customers are saying about a brand, topic, issue, person etc.

Tree maps – see this site for an excellent history of this (relatively modern) visualization tool. Wikipedia also has an entry on the topic.  This report offers an excellent overview of the use of tree maps in a plant for process control.

Heat maps - offer a similar 2-dimensional display to tree maps, and are also useful for visualizing large amounts of changing information. CrazyEgg is a different kind of heat map representing the collective user activity on webpages.

Sarah Perez – has a good blog post listing different tools and visualizations.

Radian6.com provides visualizations of online social media.