IBM Many Eyes Update

Good overview article in CNet on IBM's Many Eyes project. Shared visualization. You can upload your own data, but the results are public.

" ... Researchers in IBM's Visual Communication Lab plan to add more social-networking features to the Many Eyes Web site because they believe communities will be formed around the data-sharing and visualization tool. Still in public alpha, Many Eyes allows users to upload data sets from an Excel file or other common delineated files, click a few times to create a visual, and make it available to the public. Viewers can manipulate the 15 different types of data charts or visualizations to search and parse for alternative views and specific data subsets. By the summer, the IBM team plans to allow users to pull bigger versions of visualizations and tools into blogs, incorporate live updates into Web sites, add more browsing options, and create categorized forums so that people with similar interests can have a place to discuss the data. Many Eyes has grown from 20 data sets to more than 2,000, and has been used by Christian bloggers to analyze the Bible, and book enthusiasts have used it to upload data from Project Gutenberg, says Matt McKeon, a developer for the project. He believes sports statisticians will take to Many Eyes once more become aware of it, and hopes other researchers will put the Web site to good use ... "