Bing Twitter maps

Posted April 4th, 2010 in Labs by Mario Seijo

Bing maps recently added the ability to add custom Twitter feeds into their maps, it’s called Bing Twitter maps. The map uses Silverlight 3 by default, but the nice part about it is this: If you don’t have Silverlight installed, the map falls back to plain Javascript, which is recognized by all web browsers.  I took Microsoft up on their offer and plugged my Twitter feed into their maps.  The code is super easy to implement and add to your own site.

HTML code:

<iframe src=”http://www.bing.com/twitter/maps/embed?version=1.0&eid=769766769&user=exposedelements” width=”600″ height=”400″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″></iframe>

This demo shows my Twitter feed and Bing maps.

How about you?

I’d love to hear from you if you are using the Bing maps API; go ahead and post your links in the comments section.

Visualize your data with gRaphaël

Posted November 23rd, 2009 in Interactive Media by Mario Seijo

Let’s face it, data can sometimes be boring. I recently discovered a really cool way to visualize your data and make it more interesting. Let me ask you a simple question — which one of the examples below is the easiest to understand?

(1)

Browser Statistics
Firefox 326
Internet Explorer 71
Chrome 48
Safari 32
Opera 18
Camino 1
Konkeror 1
Mozilla 1

(2)

We can all read the data in the 1st example, but the pie chart quickly puts the data into perspective for most of us.

Did you mouse-over the pie chart? This interactivity is made possible with gRaphaël, an open source javascript library with a goal to help you create stunning charts. We are basically using pure code to render scalable vector graphics (SVG) on the fly.

If you want to visualize some boring data for your next project, head over to gRaphael for more examples and to download the source code. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words.

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