how cool is your name?

Very interesting piece on PingMag about "Infoesthetics: the beauty of data visualization". There are several examples, but the one that caught my attention was this one: The Name Voyager. It's an interactive tool showing the popularity rank of baby names from 1880 to 2005. As you can see below, "Nelson" used to be a popular name... around 1890!The accompanying blog, by Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard", offers a fascinating look into baby name trends and pop culture influence.

zapcode in singapore

I got the heads up about this from ag407's Fernando Barros (thanks Fernando), who told me about shotcode, a technology that resembles a barcode. Unlike the traditional barcode however, this technology allows mobile phone users to access more detailed information about a product, for example. Basically the code contains a link to a website, which people can access only by taking a picture of it. The applications are endless. It can be used to provide more information about products, events, movies, etc.
Now Singapore's SPH, publisher of The Straits Times, has launched a similar product called ZapCode.