chart

Just how powerful can the data behind a location-based application be? Extremely.

Earlier this month, the second annual Internet Week New York took place, and Dropio founder and certifiable data nerd Sam Lessin crunched a bunch of numbers based on what his contacts on urban navigation and friend-finding service Foursquare were doing. Lessin was working with a group of fewer than 100 contacts, almost all of whom are involved in the tech and new-media industries (this is the scene that birthed Foursquare and its predecessor Dodgeball, after all), and yet it's a fascinating peek at just how much this … Read more

Stock Chart Wizard is aptly named--with this tool you can create, tweak, analyze, and export a range of graphical stock charts. Stock Chart Wizard lets you build watch lists of your favorite stocks, and see the ups and downs of your stocks over time by downloading two years' worth of freely available historical data into your charts. Another real plus with Stock Chart Wizard is the capability to export charts into Excel and other formats for presentations.

Stock Chart Wizard's interface is all business. Here you will find no amusing skins, cheerful paperclips asking to help, or holiday-themed graphics. … Read more

Data visualizations are a great way to make something complex more easily understood from any spreadsheet or table. Verifiable, a free visualization tool does just that, by quickly organizing uploaded data sets into charts that can be customized and manipulated using a drag and drop control scheme that feels a lot like making a playlist in iTunes.

What's interesting here is that the service is putting both the charts and the data in the same place, so you can go behind the curtain to double check to see the source numbers. The other day when we wrote a follow up on the TechCrunch50 and Demo conferences … Read more

UPDATED on Thursday, April 9 at 12:30 p.m.: The original link to the eye chart broke, but a new, working one has replaced it.

April Fools' Day passed with much angst over and little action from the Conficker worm, but that doesn't mean it's not a threat.

Joe Stewart from SecureWorks has put together an effective "eye chart" that sources its graphics from sites that Conficker would block. Click here to test the eye chart. If you can't see one or more of the images, you're either infected, or image loading in … Read more

From Nielsen Soundscan by way of the LA Weekly and Rolling Stone, here are the top 10 vinyl sellers in 2008. I've added the years they were originally released, and what I imagine was going through the mind of vinylphiles when they bought it.

10. Radiohead, OK Computer, 1997. Great production, trippy artwork looks great under the lava lamp. 9. Metallica, Death Magnetic, 2008. Maybe the vinyl version won't be overcompressed to death. 8. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes, 2008. Pitchfork likes it, it must be good. 7. Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, 1973. Remember those posters? … Read more

I spend a considerable amount of time perusing financial sites for data that impacts a respective company's financial statements. Because of that, I've developed a liking for certain sites, and a severe distaste for others that have no business providing information to anyone.

But it's the great that I'm highlighting today. And in the following list of services, you'll find some obvious choices and hopefully some new services you may have never seen.

Emerginvest

One of the main issues facing sites like Bloomberg or MarketWatch is that most of their focus is placed squarely on … Read more

Any time I hear a company reference their product as a "YouTube for _____," I cringe a little. Newcomer iCharts said the same thing about its charts product at its presentation at the TechCrunch50 conference this morning. The service takes your data from spreadsheets and turns it into charts that are both hosted on the site and can be embedded elsewhere, including things like PowerPoints, message boards, and PDFs.

What makes iCharts less worthy of the YouTube cringe is that it's a solid business model. As billionaire panelist Mark Cuban pointed out, you can leverage out this … Read more

Need to make a flow chart, a family tree, a diagram, or just plan the layout of your new apartment? Check out OmniGraffle, from the folks who make the classy OmniWeb browser. OmniGraffle offers all the tools you need to make professional-looking diagrams for any presentation you might have. Whether you're just sketching out ideas for a business plan or even planning an elaborate presentation, OmniGraffle helps you create a nice-looking diagram everyone will appreciate.

Still not sure if OmniGraffle is right for you? Download OmniGraffle and read our review.

Are you a stats junkie? If you're like me and could make comparison charts all day long you should check out Tablefy, a simple service that lets you quickly put together large and complex tables of data. You can compare whatever you want, and there's already a handful of user-created data tables like superhero stats, sports car specifications, and even a well-done chart of several popular blogging tools going head-to-head.

The tool is set up just like any old spreadsheet, except that you can predefine any row by what you're planning to put in it. You can drop in text and numbers or insert media like a YouTube video or hosted photo. In the chart embedded below I managed to throw in two videos with just a copy and paste. You can also increase your fill-out speed using simple keyboard shortcuts that let you skip ahead either by row or column. Some of the auto-formatting is especially well done. For example, writing yes or no automatically turns the cell green or red respectively. Trying to do that in Google Spreadsheets can be a pain unless you've got a template set up or take the time to format the cells.

What makes the tool really neat is that you can grab any bit of data from another chart and add it to your "comparison basket." It will automatically link up any related data like height, weight, age, etc., and put it in the right row across all the tables you've added. This lets you come up with crazy combinations. For example, I compared the XBox 360 to Iron Man (both awesome). More beneficial creations include a presidential nominee comparison, popular water filters going sink-to-sink, and a listing of poisonous plants to avoid.

Chart creators can also declare a winner between each column of data. Likewise anyone who reads that chart can agree or disagree through the comments or with a simple radio button.

Tablefy reminds me a lot of data comparison and tracking service Swivel. The big difference between the two being Tablefy's focus on just charts, whereas Swivel branches out into scatter plots, bar graphs, and pie charts. Swivel also has a huge head start on user- and service-generated data. For use in things like term papers or business reports, users are likely to see Swivel if only for this richer mass of searchable data.

To see an introductory video of Tablefy, hit the break below.

… Read more