46 karma · joined February 19, 2009
This was just posted but it has some useful info. http://chartio.com/blog/2013/08/informationdashboarddesign
The D3 charting library has some really unusual diagrams that seem like they would add an extra dimension to a dashboard. https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery
Kibana 3 looks like it could be useful, It also led me to the Logstash library which looks helpful. http://three.kibana.org
I've not built the system yet so I don't have much practical experience with these libraries, but they seem like my leading candidates for the display side of the project.
In the 1990's (Thanks Jeron) we were all expecting VR to be the next step away from the 2D windowed computing environment. For some reason that didn't take off. At the same time there was a lot of academic hype around the idea of ubiquitous computing. I think the iPhone/iPod Touch was the first tentative step into this direction, but without the real estate for effective daily work. I think the iPad will solve a lot of these issues and therefor go way beyond anyone's expectations.
Why is it that the big money is there to eek out a Nth of a percent but not available for fresh big ideas? I'm not at all disagreeing with you, I just think that's an interesting point. I wish the world were the other way around it might be a better place (or maybe there'd just be less "big money" for having tried). Maybe if MS let smaller groups run wild more often they'd see more of these elusive "innovative ideas".