Link of the Moment

I guess most people don’t for fear of damage. Damage to whatever :) . Well, people actually do jump on hotel beds.

http://www.BedJump.com/

Source: UserFriendly

What is it: It’s a blog where people submit their pictures of themselves jumping on hotel beds all across the world (German hotel beds seemed to be especially good for jumping for some reason - and some time ago…). First I couldn’t believe it but people seem to be having so much fun I found myself smiling and grinning just by browsing. Go get your smile there. Now!

e.g. statistical facts

http://www.brazilianartists.net/home/flags/index.htm

Source: UC Berkeley iSchool mailing list

What is it: This site has some of the flag images created by a campaign called “Meet the World”. What’s so special about the images? Well, the thoughts behind them. It goes like this:

• think about measurable demographics (best are percentages) of a country
• measure the surface area of the various colors or features of the country’s flag
• check if the (numeric) values of that data somehow relate to one of the values mesaured in the flag
• match and map the found relations

What do you get? You for example get to see that the blue area in the EU flag represents the oil consumption of the EU if the golden stars represent it’s oil production. Nice way of putting relations into focus.

Thrilling Wonders of the World, frequently updated

http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/

Source: UC Berkeley iSchool mailing list
What is it: “Dark Roasted Blend” is a blog posting all those little astonishing things you never look for and are amazed by when you receive them by mail. People converting commercial airliners into homes, extreme close-ups of gemstones, weird musical scores and so on. I was sent a link to this one (the reason for this post showing up in “visualization”), some world maps distorted to show the size of countries as a function of e.g. house prices, war deaths or alcohol consumption. Nice perspectives in that, but I think the whole blog is worth a visit.

update: I’ve become a frequent reader in the last week or so…