usa today snapshots

I was in Barnes and Noble and I noticed a little book filled with those USA Today infographics (they call them snapshots) so of course I had to pick it up. Most of the charts are so ridiculous, but fun nonetheless. I can see how the evolution of graphjam or indexed came about after so many years of this "McGraph" style of dumbing down the data to a funny cartoon. My feeling is that data should be presented in any number of ways depending on the audience, mood, information, just like food. Sometimes fine dining is called for, sometimes a hot dog will do. As long as you are eating, then it's all good!

Amazon has only four left as of today so folks must like them a cute little graph. Shhhh...don't tell but I think you can look at a lot of them on the internet.

twitter timeline

http://static.manolith.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/the-story-of-twitter.jpg

This infographic of twitter's rise from geeky roots of SMS and ICQ to today's twitterific apps and celebrity tweets is a fascinating and informative timeline. What will happen with short bursts of thought next?

first post

I have always wanted to be able to share all the stuff I read about information design, design thinking, productivity, data and information visualization, dashboards, all the stuff I am interested in. I find all kinds of inspiration and good thinking on these topics, but no place to share what I am learning so I can go back or just enlighten those who know me and might be curious about the things I care about. Anyways, I thought it best to call my blog page, GOOD THINKING, because that is generally what I come across, cool ideas and stories that inform, enlighten, inspire, etc. I also find it interesting how I find these things, so I would also like to capture a method to my madness.

Today, for instance...I noticed Trish had a news widget on her iGoogle that was set for MCG news. So I went to my desk and added the same widget, which made me think, "Wow, this is an old theme, what are some new ones?" So I went through the themes very quickly and noticed IDEO had one out there now. "OOH, I love that company, what are they up to lately?" So I headed to their home page to see what was cooking, and all I can say is wow, the website, their approach to the work, all of it is so amazing. So then I saw the CEO of IDEO has a blog, so I was reading that which led me back around to Stanford d.school and then over to the fabulous Seth Godin, who was discussing dashboards. Then it hit me, "Gosh, I wish I could write about all these great things I find on a daily basis" which led me to go set up my first blog.

So here I am and here we go...