plotting

PlotWatt's software doesn't just read electricity meter information and post it online. It takes a building's energy pulse to find out what's going on inside.

Like many other building energy start-ups, the North Carolina-based company is developing a system to provide recommendations on how to improve efficiency based on meter information. To build a profile of a building's energy use, PlotWatt's cloud-based software parses a home's power signal to tell consumers where most of their energy goes.

The software detects differences in power consumption patterns to isolate large appliances, such as air conditioners … Read more

Digitize It by Alcasa is a free tool for extracting digital plotting data from image files. It has many uses, such as plotting points when the source data isn't available. It's easy to use; simply click on an image with your mouse to plot the point. Collected data can be pasted directly to Excel.

We extracted the zipped download and installed Digitize It, which opened with an interface that is similar in style to graphics editors but notable for floating options and tool tips boxes within the main window. The toolbar icons are mostly familiar with the addition … Read more

Excel's built-in plotting capability can only create one left-right axis per plot. Office Expander's Multy_Y is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that creates multiple Y axes on the left side of plots using existing Excel charts. Each Excel chart appears as a new Y axis on the selected Multy_Y plot, whereas the plot itself is depicted on a separate Excel chart. It can generate automatically formatted plots from XY-scatter plots. You can plot time factors on the X axis of Multy_Y's plots, too. The fully customizable plots created with Multy_Y will display in any Excel edition, not … Read more

We possess some basic knowledge about photography and photo editing, but occasionally we encounter a photography-related program that we don't fully understand. Fortunately, one of us is married to a photographer, and he comes in pretty handy when we have questions. So it went with ExposurePlot. We understood that the program displayed EXIF info for groups of images in a bar graph format, but we didn't understand why.

"I don't understand why, either," said our photographer-husband as we looked at ExposurePlot together. The Overview tab of the program was displaying four bar graphs depicting the … Read more

Plenty of people have aspirations of writing a novel or screenplay, and most of those people have a lot of ideas about the plot and characters of their masterpiece. Actually getting those ideas down on paper in a way that makes sense isn't always easy, though, and many potential writers get overwhelmed before they even begin. PlotBuilder is a simple program that breaks the writing process down into manageable steps, making it easier for writers to get started and keep going.

The program's interface is simple and intuitive, reminding us of more recent versions of Microsoft Office. The … Read more

Sources tell CBS News that the last registered owner of a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder containing a homemade bomb and found in Times Square on Saturday night told authorities that he recently sold the vehicle to a "Middle Eastern"- or "Hispanic"-looking man for $1,300 cash in $100 bills via Craigslist.

Authorities interviewed the Pathfinder's registered owner on Sunday night but say he is not a suspect in the case. The vehicle identification number on the Pathfinder had been removed from the dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine and axle. Its license … Read more

Graphing Calculator 3D from Runitor is a handy and free 3D graphing utility that plots graphs for two-and three-dimensional mathematical functions and coordinates tables. It supports parametric equations and Cartesian and polar coordinates in 2D and 3D, inequalities in 3D, and other capabilities. It boasts dazzling 3D graphs with seemingly limitless variations. You can change the color, shading, and appearance of graphs, add animation and other features, and rotate and zoom them in real time. You can define your own functions and variables or use one of over 20 provided functions.

Graphing Calculator boasts an attractive and functional if slightly … Read more

Writing a novel can seem like an overwhelming process. All those characters and details to keep track of, not to mention finding the proper structure and pacing. Many would-be novelists just don't know where to begin. MyNovel breaks the novel-writing process into manageable pieces, giving writers a clear idea of how to proceed through each step of the writing process.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive, with a layout that's similar to Office 2007 products. Although the program's Help file is well-written and thorough, most users should have little reason to visit it. MyNovel guides … Read more

Swivel is a data visualization service that lets you add your own data sets or search from a large pool of public submissions. If this sounds boring, it shouldn't. It's actually kind of fun and very similar to browsing Flickr. Data is presented in several ways, from pie charts to bar graphs to scatter plots. You can also easily tab over in any graphical chart representation to get the raw chart numbers. Where was this when I was in college?

Most of the content on Swivel is fairly bland, such as the prime loan rates for banks, but … Read more