Here is a running copy of the visualization I put together for Adobe MAX 2009.

This visualization takes data collected by ocean buoys (CDIP) and plots them visually to make it easier for myself to know when the surf is good and if it is getting better or worse.   You can watch the full presentation where I explain this visualization in detail here: http://www.twgonzalez.com/blog/?p=267

Here is a brief synopsis:

4 Buoys visualized

Each buoy breaks down wave energy along a spectrum banded by 9 ranges of wave periods.

Arc segments with longer radi represent longer periods (shorter wedges represent less powerful wind swells, longer wedges show more powerful ground swells.)

The length (size) of the arc is determined by how much energy is within that specific band of swell period (more arc length equals more energy.)

Interactivity:

1)  You can select a particular buoy by clicking its label – that will then display a 2 week history for that buoy in the histogram along the bottom.

2) You can roll over any particular wedge and see a datatip with a 12 hour history for that particular period.   The energy shown is in cm2 and represents the surface area underneath the wave – it does not directly correspond to wave height.

3)  You can  animate the 2 week period by pressing the play button within the histogram.

3)  You can pause the animation and manually move the animation forward with left/right arrow keys

4)  You can also use your mouse click to skip to any section of the time period.

I have plans to add more to this visual over time, and I actually have a version working against live data, I just need to carve out the time to publish it to my server.

Axiis Beta 1

We have just recently released the Beta 1 version of Axiis last week.

This version of Axiis is a much more stable and cleaner build than the Alpha we released back in May.   There have been performance optimizations, refactoring of our core classes, and lots of little bug fixes.   We have also added a couple new examples to our examples section.

I am personally using Axiis now in several commercial projects, and I would feel comfortable recommending it to others if you are a on the more advanced side of the Flex development spectrum.

For those of you who missed my session at Adobe MAX this year, you can see the recorded session here.    I have included a link to the source code as well at the end of this post.

I would suggest viewing the presentation directly from the Adobe site, as it provides a better user experience.  They did a great job of creating chapters in the timeline so you can skip ahead to relevant sections.

I have also included the source code which you can download from here:

http://www.twgonzalez.com/demos/SourceCode/MAX_2009.zip

For those of you attending Adobe MAX 2009, or wanting a reason to attend, I will be speaking on Advanced Data Visualization and Axiis Monday afternoon Oct 5th at 3:00pm and Tuesday afternoon Oct 6th at 1:30pm.

This purpose of this article is to introduce developers and data visualization specialists to Axiis, which is an open source data visualization project based on Adobe Flex and Actionscript 3. While you do not have to be an expert in Flex Builder or ActionScript 3, having experience in both will make understanding this tutorial easier. Throughout the article I will assume you are comfortable with the fundamentals of building an application with Flex, and understand some of the primary language constructs embodied within ActionScript 3 and the Flex SDK, primarily MXML and Binding.

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