the latest happenings from our Dulles Campus

Tufte offers a good map as an excellent example of how to display a rich array of information. Artists also take inspiration from maps and sometimes base their work around them.

Author Katherine Harmon’s new book The Map as Art showcases 360 pieces of work where the artist drew from maps in some way. The artists then use those maps as a platform for enriching their story, also giving a distinct context for each piece.

It’s kind of funny that I found this book while looking for inspiration for new ways to display information. It’s life imitating art imitating real live maps, but I think an artistic eye can add a lot in terms of color and composition that can be used for visual displays such as graphs and charts.

You can but Harmon’s book on Amazon, along with her previous tome called You Are Here. Her previous work explores the passion and people behind the history of map-making.

Via CoolHunting

One of the coolest things going on at AOL has to be the latest AIM features that allow you to get your Facebook and Twitter feeds right in the new application. Now you can also update either service or post comments from the AIM client itself.

I thought it was really cool when Digsby added the ability to read Twitter and Facebook updates in your IM client. Then Seesmic came out with the first Facebook client built on Adobe Air. Now the AIM team allows you to keep up with and communicate with all your friends in one place.

When you download the latest version of AIM, you’ll notice that there’s a new tab called Lifestream. You set up the client with your Twitter and Facebook credentials, then all your friends’ updates show up in this tab. If a friend posts the same message to multiple services, AIM will automatically combine the entries.

You can also update your Facebook and Twitter status message just by updating your away message. That way you don’t need to open up a new browser window or stop working to update your status.

It’s been really working with some members of the AIM team for the last year and getting a glimpse of the new AIM and Lifestream products in beta. I’ve found myself leaning more on the AIM client every day to keep up with social networks while I work.

Job search engine Indeed.com is one of my favorite ways to search for jobs across the Web. The team at Indeed also created this interesting infographic to give job seekers an idea of where the top job markets are.

The blue chairs on the left represent job openings indexed by Indeed during the month of June. The orange people represent the number of unemployed people available to fill those roles.

This very simple chart easily displays the ratio of jobs to available people with simple icons that are very easy to read. Some may warn that the number of job postings may be a better representation of the number of recruitment firms in an area than the number of jobs.

I’d have to disagree with this analysis. It’s plain to see that the Washington, DC area outstrips the rest of the county by more than double the number of jobs to people ratios, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s rife with recruiters any more than other towns.

For instance the San Jose area, also known as the Silicon Valley is host to a large technical community and hundreds of recruitment firms. However we don’t see the same wildly larger ratio there. Besides, if the DC market were that flooded with recruiting companies, the market wouldn’t be able to support them. The fact that everywhere else in the country seems to have a similar ratio points me to an entirely different conclusion.

It seems to me that DC has more available jobs because of the fact that it’s the epicenter of federal government contracting. Government contractors have years-long contracts with Uncle Sam that tend to make them able to outlast a recession in the near term. The market here has different peaks and valleys, so government spending cuts could also cut DC’s job market down to size as well.

Millions of people have been waiting to get a Google Wave account ever since the revolutionary collaboration tools was announced at the end of May. Wave promises to allow a group to collaborate on documents in real time and share information concurrently.

Now Google has announced that Apps users at schools and businesses will be the first to try out Wave. This is an interesting way to get students collaborating on projects and could replace expensive document workflow software for small companies that can’t afford it.

Workflows can be added to Google Wave by creating a document and processing it through a ‘robot.’ The robot allows one user to enter certain data in a form before requiring approval from another user. Google Wave can then even send records to a back-end database to enter an order for example.

It’s a little disappointing that individual users will have to keep waiting for Google Wave, but it seems like it will be most useful in group settings. Still Wave looks like a fun way to integrate projects with communication for a real-time virtual collaboration tool that’s free.

Below is a video about workflows with Google Wave from Mastering Wave.

The Nurus Hexadesk is crafted from light-weight carbon fiber topped by smoke-colored molded workspace. The shape of the desktop creates a personal space for work as well as space for guests.

Carbon fiber is being used extensively for items ranging from car hoods to bicycles and kayak paddles. Designer Can Yalman uses it to create the Hexadesk’s simple lines.

I believe very strongly that your workspace can dramatically impact your state of mind and productivity. The Hexadesk is not only clean, it also serves to provide a clean and open space in which to work.

The Hexadesk was created for Turkish office furniture company Nurus. While the desk is light to carry, it’s probably fairly heavy on your wallet.

This week we released two must-have applications that run on the iPhone and iPhone 3g: an AIM client and AOL Radio. They’ve both been generating a lot of buzz as some of the best free iPhone applications at launch. AOL has been working hard to create great mobile experiences such as the main portal that was revamped last year, AOL MyMobile and the launch of a number of free mobile applications.

Let’s take a look at each of these new iPhone apps or you can learn more at AOL Mobile

AIM for iPhone

Aim is the first IM client for the iPhone and offers full IM functionality in a handset version. We’ve been working with Apple on this one for a while and demoed an early version at Macworld this year. We’re now offering free IM clients for both iPhone and for the Windows Mobile platforms, so that you can access them directly without paying any monthly subscription charges to your mobile carriers.

AOL Radio for iPhone

AOL Radio provides access to hundreds of local radio stations on your iPhone through a partnership with CBS. Since the quality of music is adjusted based on your bandwidth, you’ll get the best sound with 3G connectivity.

Note: Though I work at AOL, the views expressed here are my own thank-you-very-much.

Today the AIM team announced the Beta release of AIM Express 7 web instant messenger client. This version was built in Flash to create a really fantastic user experience. Here’s the release:

Help us test drive AIM’s new and improved Instant Messenger for the Web, called AIM Express. Now you can chat with your friends anywhere you have an internet connection - from the library, while traveling or working, or even visiting grandma’s house. We’ve made some updates from the older version…it’s lightweight, easy to use, and accessible world-wide. Now, in a single window, you can view your Buddy List® and chat with your friends directly from your browser.

I checked it out and was very impressed by how clean and user-friendly the interface is and how fast the flash was. It loads into your buddy list and lets you switch between chats using tabs and you don’t even need to open multiple windows.

Disclosure: I do work at AOL, but these views are my own and not those of my employer.

Only one more day until Ubuntu 8.04: Hardy Heron is released. I’ve been playing with 8.04 since it was in beta and overall it’s a very solid Operating System. If you’re interested to check it out, you don’t actually have to install it to your machine. You can either run a Ubuntu Live-Cd or use Wubi to install Ubuntu as a software package under Windows.

Yes, you read that correctly… Via Wubi you can install Ubuntu as a Windows program without the need to repartition a harddrive and it will also update the NT Loader automatically. Check out the Wubi homepage if you want to know more.

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This week AOL launched a mobile web gaming portal in conjunction with Cellufun. These are WAP-based mobile games for the http://wap.aol.com/games targeting the casual gamer. Games include Call of the Pharaoh, Space Wars, Ice Fishing, and many popular card and board games. This is one of the first instances I’ve seen of ad-supported games on the mobile phone. I think it will get even more interesting as mobile web browsers become provide better AJAX and Flash support, but this is an excellent start.

This afternoon I had a chance to listen to a talk by Thomas Vander Wal, the innovator that coined the term folksonomy circa 1994. He speaks on social media and two of the key factors that he looks at are folksonomy and circles of sociability and does workshops diving in depth on a particular service or platforms. Thomas does a really good job of breaking down the components of any social media site, whether a social network, bookmarking service or social news. The most fundamental concept of social media is what he calls ‘object oriented sociality.’ That is the concept that media sites are really about people and some sort of object whether it’s a link, a profile or other media.

One of the exercises that he’ll do in evaluating a social service is look at the difference user perspectives and levels of engagement. It’s important to evaluate your service from the perspective of the casual user and the contributor, the newbie and the third-party developer to see how usable your service is to these different communities. The level of engagement comes down to turning newbies into casual users and casual users into contributors.
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