Gapminder.org - For a fact based world view.

The most interesting part of this for me is watching Hans Rosling walk through a lot of the data. I first saw it as a TED talk, but you can watch them at the gapminder website:

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/

I think this is a great tool, but once again the problem is with the data. It's very hard to compare entities because the methods each uses to compute their statistics varies between countries and time.

This can often be seen when people look at infant mortality rates (different by country), or the number of those in poverty (definition of poverty changes). So the danger of this is that it requires a nuanced understanding of the data to actually get a fact based world view.

Google acquired Trendalyzer (the flash-based dynamic graph visualization tool) from the Gapminder Foundation back in 2007. It will be interesting to see what Google will do with this technology. Perhaps a time-based animated Google Analytics with stats playback on many metrics,A/B tests axis. That would be neat to see the user flow on your website! Or simply for a flashier Google trends.

Gapminder is going to be very painful to watch when the consequences of the current economic crisis start to be reflected in the data.