Saturday, June 25, 2005
Saturday TechNerd Blogging
One of my responsibilities in my day job is counseling people who've managed to paint themselves into a corner through strange or inept use of their desktop computers. For some reason, even after repeated reminders, warnings, ever more irritable growls from me, the message still hasn't sunk in: If you download and install things on your computer just because they're cute or flashy, eventually your computer will misbehave.
One plague I've almost given up trying to stamp out is that of little animated-GIF icons which people insert into their e-mail messages. I don't know where these things come from, and don't want to know. I'm not a grumpy misanthrope when it comes to use of smileys and other emoticons -- I've been online since the 1980s and have seen (and used) plenty of them myself -- but still cling to the archaic view that (a) e-mail is a communications medium, and (b) loading up your e-mails with in-line graphics conveying knee-slapping laughter, Bronx cheers, and the like is getting in the way of communication. Each one of them is like a little speed bump.
But now, thanks to a feature I just read on XML.com, I've come across the notion of "sparklines." A sparkline is a small, type-sized, in-line graphic whose purpose is expressly to communicate information. (Imagine that.) Here's a sparkline from the XML.com article:
What is it? It's a tiny graph of "the number of new links to it per month as recorded by Technorati." The "it" in that quoted phrase is an online chapter of a book, Beautiful Evidence, by Edward Tufte; the chapter is all about sparklines, including historical precedents (Galileo's notes on the moons of Saturn, an engraving by Albrecht Dürer) and plenty of sample applications (including stock prices, baseball teams' won/lost records, and so on).
Joe Gregorio, author of the XML.com feature, has developed a little Web service which lets you insert your own sparklines into Web posts. Here, for example, is a sparkline showing the public's approval of what passes for W's handling of Iraq, per the Washington Post-ABC poll, for the 27 months since the US invasion in March 2003:
(The high point, marked in blue, was of course April 2003; the low, in red, March 2005. If you hover your mouse cursor over the image, you'll see a little tool-tip listing the values.)
One plague I've almost given up trying to stamp out is that of little animated-GIF icons which people insert into their e-mail messages. I don't know where these things come from, and don't want to know. I'm not a grumpy misanthrope when it comes to use of smileys and other emoticons -- I've been online since the 1980s and have seen (and used) plenty of them myself -- but still cling to the archaic view that (a) e-mail is a communications medium, and (b) loading up your e-mails with in-line graphics conveying knee-slapping laughter, Bronx cheers, and the like is getting in the way of communication. Each one of them is like a little speed bump.
But now, thanks to a feature I just read on XML.com, I've come across the notion of "sparklines." A sparkline is a small, type-sized, in-line graphic whose purpose is expressly to communicate information. (Imagine that.) Here's a sparkline from the XML.com article:
What is it? It's a tiny graph of "the number of new links to it per month as recorded by Technorati." The "it" in that quoted phrase is an online chapter of a book, Beautiful Evidence, by Edward Tufte; the chapter is all about sparklines, including historical precedents (Galileo's notes on the moons of Saturn, an engraving by Albrecht Dürer) and plenty of sample applications (including stock prices, baseball teams' won/lost records, and so on).Joe Gregorio, author of the XML.com feature, has developed a little Web service which lets you insert your own sparklines into Web posts. Here, for example, is a sparkline showing the public's approval of what passes for W's handling of Iraq, per the Washington Post-ABC poll, for the 27 months since the US invasion in March 2003:
