By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – September 30, 2010 at 02:00PM
ManyEyes is a neat tool that produces compelling visualizations based on user-defined data sets, with data types ranging from statistics tables to any old block of text.
Making your own visualization is pretty simple. You can use data already on ManyEyes to play around with it, but it is, of course, more useful when you create your own data set.
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Creating a data set is pretty simple. You can paste in all kinds of data—even the contents of a spreadsheet without worrying about formatting.
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After pasting in your data it’ll be interpreted in real time. Take a look at it to make sure it’s what you expect.
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When you’ve approved the data set, you’ll then be able to click the Visualize button to create your data visualization. You’ll have lots of options and you can try as many as you want.
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You’re not stuck with just numerical data visualizations, however. One of the more interesting visualizations comes from blocks of text. I put Jason’s article on IP Webcam in ManyEyes and created a Word Cloud. The largest words are the most commonly used and they give a pretty good idea of what the article’s about.
ManyEyes is a free tool and can create compelling visuals that you can use in presentations, reports, or just for fun.