If I have a hot dataset and want to visualize it for you – my dear readers – your eyes would hurt. I would fire up Microsoft Excel, plug in some numbers, and spit out a the same light-blue 3D pie chart that you’ve seen 1000 times over. If I wanted to get super creative I would use… Microsoft Paint? Can you even download that for a Mac? Thankfully, Latvia-based Infogr.am exists, and is continuing to provide new ways for anyone to create nice looking and interactive infographics.
Late last night Infogr.am announced a new update to their service. They’ve re-built the charting engine with much better mathematics and functionality, which before felt a little buggy. They’ve also updated their infographics library, so you can discover more content and see how others have used the service.
Another new feature I’m excited about is maps. When comparing countries, an interactive map helps you visualize trends much better than an alphabetical list of countries. To use that functionality, you just plug in your data next to the country names, and Infogram spits out the chart.
Uldis Leiterts, founder of Infogr.am, tells us that the service currently has 90 000 registered users worldwide.
“We’re excited to see infogr.am being increasingly adopted in serious industries as news portals, finance, education. Our userbase grows in quality and so does the tools we offer,” says Leiterts.
While this update feels significant, they still consider it their version 0.5 update. Infogram is becoming a more and more polished product, but they face the challenge that there are a near infinite number of ways data can be visualized, and it can be tough to find the right type of chart from Infogram’s small, but growing collection of charts.
Here’s an example infographic:
