ipears

Just after publishing my latest post, I came across Swivel, a quite stunning website with some great features for visualizing trends by means of graphs.

Update: Received a comment by Brian Mulloy [CEO and cofounder of Swivel] who pointed out that Swivel has special option to integrate a graph in your blog. Options to size the graph included, so here is what it should look like (Thanks Brian!):

A few other sites that help you post visual representations of trends or comparisons:

1. Sizeasy - Sizeasy allows you to compare dimensions of items you find described on the web often. Many online stores show the dimensions of items like Product Dimensions: 192×45x32mm. Although useful this doesn’t give us a feel for the real size of the item that we would get going into a high street store. Sizeasy allows you to take this size information and see it drawn out to scale next to everyday items so you get a real feel for its size.
2. Many Eyes - A site by IBM that does about the same as Swivel: Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Its goal is to “democratize” visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis.
3. IceRocket - IceRocket is a global leader in commercial search services on the Internet, providing new and more powerful ways for customers to find exactly what they are looking for. IceRocket is pioneering commercial search by putting the interests and wants of consumers before advertisers. IceRocket has innovative blog search technology to search blogosphere.

Especially for those bloggers who work with many figures and comparisons, these applications can surely generate a higher visitor understanding level.