Tim Ho » Cool Stuff

Data Visualization: IBM World Factbook Dashboard

Tim Ho — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:12:19 +0000

If you like data visualization, you probably don’t want to miss this one.

I just discovered this interactive dashboard IBM has developed earlier this year. Google has put together a visualization tool with the same sets of data by World Bank, but World Factbook Dashboard presents the data in a way more stylish and advanced way.

Great tool to be bookmarked for future country research as it can give you quick understanding of basic information like population and GDP. I would love to have some social media data in this Dashboard!!

Here’s a video of live demo of the tool:

Try this tool now!

Free Tool: Global Web Index Lite

Tim Ho — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:41:09 +0000

GlobalWebIndex has recently launched a free tool that allows users to quickly get a snapshot of their data on social media insights, this free tool was built based around the data they have gathered from Wave 2 database from January 2010. The latest data, Wave 3 from July 2009 is only available for GlobalWebIndex clients.

This tool comes very handy when you are looking to create quick slides with valuable data that gives brief understanding of online behavior for specific group of people from different regions.

I tried to embed the tool to this blog post but I failed to adjust the size of it.

Start playing with the tool now

Toyota recalls? Garage door company laughs

Tim Ho — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:49:52 +0000

Dansk Port Teknik (DPT), garage door company recently worked with agency JWT Copenhagen this creative advertisement that really takes the most out of Toyota’s recall. This ad promotes 20% off on all garage doors, for Toyota owners only along with the broken garage door.

Marketing/ advertising industry is often cruel. It’s been only a week, Toyota loses more than $20 billion in market share and recalls couple million cars, companies have already published ads making laughs of their mistakes to generate sales.

First Time Ever: Live Fashion Shows on Smartphones

Tim Ho — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:31:52 +0000

Dolce&Gabbana has always been the leader in technology among other fashion brands. In 2005, D&G broadcasted their fashion shows live on it’s official website. In 2008, they started to get into the mobile market, established dolcegabbana.mobi to create a more interactive way to communicate with fans, then a free iphone app was developed after.

They just announced few hours ago (Feb/19/2010 12:46 PM Milan Time CET) that they are going to offer fans the opportunity to watch the upcoming Fall/Winter 2010/11 season fashion show live on iPhone and Android Mobile Devices. The live show will be available at live.dolcegabbana.mobi on February 25th 3:00PM (GMT+1).

It’s another case showing how important smartphone users are for businesses these days, can’t wait to see how they will execute it to create the buzz, I’m sure many social media elements will be included.

New Toy: Codeorgan – Generate music with your website

Tim Ho — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:41:14 +0000

This a a creative online app I discovered that generates music from any URL. All you have to do is to type in a URL, the program will then analyze the html script in the content and generate a unique piece of music for this URL. User can share this piece of music through Twitter or Facebook.

It is a thought leadership project by a UK digital creative agency DLKW

Check out Codeorgan now.

Data Visualization Tool: Mondrian

Tim Ho — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:41:45 +0000

I just found this amazing free tool that can do some smart data visualization with the simplest sets of data comparing to other visualization tools. You can just import basic excel files or even txt files with huge chunk of data and it will categorize and visualize them.

Graphics and interface might not be as sexy as what you see on informationisbeautiful, but it can definitely help you understand the relationships between groups of numbers. It generates basic bar graphs as well as graphs like below.

Download it and play around with their sample data, you will see what I mean.

Be an Official Virgin: Non-profit, or Scam?

Tim Ho — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:21:05 +0000

A new site was just launched with this funny campaign called “Certified Virgins” where people can get a “certificate of virginity” with US$1.00 each, they claimed that “part of” it will be donated to the Aids cure research.

This site has a very clean and official-looking design, but until it is linked to or by an organization with more credibility, I will still be skeptical about where the donations are going to go since there’s no official claims on the site.

Other than the money, they are also collecting emails along with the applications and never claim on how these email will be used. Many “black hat” websites these days like to collect email and sell the mailing lists to other companies, which, eventually will end up with spammers.

As there are more and more similar campaigns like “Verified Virgin” these days, people should always make sure they are donating to legit non-profit organizations.

At this stage, I don’t know if this campaign is “real”, but at least you can still have a good laugh. Below is what you have to agree on before you decide to make yourself a virgin.

Go to the URL now

If Steve Jobs is coming for lunch, what would you make?

Tim Ho — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:13:09 +0000

This is a viral piece was posted on the same day as the iPad released. Jakob Hammarback and Jon Wingard created the iSandwhitch 4G as an experiment to see if it can go viral. It is a video showing how they use different ingredients all put together on a piece of bread to create the same shape of the iPhone.

On their blog, they said the video got them 4403 visits on the first day they uploaded. It has more than 18,000 views on youtube now and growing. Creative idea and smart timing!

Viral Campaign: A movie about YOU

Tim Ho — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:44:12 +0000

There have been many viral websites lately that requires users to upload images of themselves, most of these websites have face detection script on it which allows them to add funny and special effect to the faces.

This one is a little bit different, instead of adding effects to images, this creates a movie about you. It is campaign by Sweden’s TV licensing body Radiotjänst.

You can choose to upload an image of using the Webcam, I picked to use the webcam.

Start with people waiting to know who the "Hero" is

Still waiting...

The hero is... Tim Ho! Trying to look serious in the office.

Everyone loves me

I'm everywhere

Artists make paintings of me

At the end of the movie, it requests Swedish ID #

The film quality is very well done.

You can try creating your own movie here.

Rambler: The Sneakers that Tweet

Tim Ho — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:54:12 +0000

Rambler is the only pair of shoes in the world that owns a Twitter account, designed and created by artist and technology savvy Ricardo Nascimento. These’s a sensor inside the sneakers that tracks movements, then updates it’s Twitter. However, it can only tweet two words, “tap” and “.”, depending on the pressure you exert.

It’s quite creative but not practical at all at this stage, would be interesting to see it upgraded with geotagging features.