The Infographic to end all Infographics

Ivan Cash - infographic designer extraordinaire - has put together a view of some of the visual devices, informational elements, and general trends found in the modern day infographic. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The big takeaways here: bar charts are still the goto choice for data viz and - take note data heads - that most charts have more than one source.

The Art of Purposeful Storytelling

Peter Guber, chairman and CEO of the Mandalay Entertainment Group, explains how to establish an emotional connection with any audience. He is the author of Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story.

Horoscoped

An excellent site in its own right, Information is Beautiful serves up all kinds of unusual data interpretations and visualizations. They recently scraped and analyzed 22,000 horoscopes to see if they are all basically just saying the same thing. The verdict? 90% of the words in horoscopes are the same.

Here is a 'meta-horoscope':

"Ready? Sure? Whatever the situation or secret moment, enjoy everything a lot. Feel able to absolutely care. Expect nothing else. Keep making love. Family and friends matter. The world is life, fun and energy. Maybe hard. Or easy. Taking exactly enough is best. Help and talk to others. Change your mind and a better mood comes along..."

- made from most-common words in 4000 star sign predictions

Four Presentation Predictions for 2011

From the always excellent Nancy Duarte - author of Slideology (which we liberally crib from en masse). Her 4 predictions for presentations in 2011:

1. Tablets will shape future of presentation platforms

2. Authenticity trumps "spin"

3. Hand Made

4. Increase in NO SLIDE ZONES.

You read the last one correctly, this is where speakers will stand up and talk. of course, not without a lot of planning.

Here is the full article

10 Best Data Visualization Projects of 2010

Data Visualization is a hot topic - everyone is in the game to make the most of the exponentially growing amount of data in the world. And there is no forseeable shortage of data in the future (though, it's a nice thought).

Here are ten choice examples which boil the complex into the elegantly simple.

(courtesy of flowing data.com)