CART 351 – Project #1

This is the first entry / assignment for the class CART 351 taught by Brad Todd which class website can be found on the following link: http://hybrid.concordia.ca/~brad_to/cart351/ After reading this projects description, I tried to break it down into 3 elements that were required. Here are the elements and a few notes of how I interpreted them:

1. Cartographic visualization (Visualization of data in some map form)
2. Map or mapping (Similar to element 1)
3. Participatory element (Interactive element)

The idea I brainstormed was to create an interactive site with all the countries broken up by the continents they reside on. In addition, if time permitted I wanted to integrate the maps of these countries and the provinces and states as well  into the system. (Update: Time did not permit me to add these features since it took me longer then I thought.) One more element I wanted was that all the data would come from a database that way it would be easier to update. I started by searching for data visualization examples on the internet to get some ideas. I then found some flash / javascript libraries to create these interesting data visualizations effects. Here are the links:

• http://flare.prefuse.org/demo
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8552410.stm
• http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/the-best-sound-youll-ever-see/
• http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/ex/
• http://datavisualization.ch/tools/13-javascript-libraries-for-visualizations
• http://thejit.org/demos/
• http://www.worldatlas.com/cntycont.htm (Used to get countries and continents)
• http://kuler.adobe.com (Used to get colour combination ideas)

I originally wanted to use the flash classes since they offered some more interesting effects, I was unable to since I was having trouble with my software installation. I decided to the the Javascript class from www.thejit.org where I used one of their examples as the basis of this work. Click here to see the link to the final version of project #1.