ThoughtMap

After Writer River was brought down by a hacker, Tom Johnson moved it from Pligg to Prologue. Read about Tom’s experience, and then visit the new, hacker-free, Twitter-like Writer River.

I’m very behind on keeping up with my regular listservs and writing-related web sites (hey, it’s summer), so I haven’t checked out Tom Johnson’s I’d Rather Be Writing in quite awhile. There are so many interesting posts there, but the one I found most intriguing today is his announcement of the new WriterRiver.com site, which he recently created.

“WriterRiver.com is a social news site for technical communicators, which means you can both submit and vote on news stories”

This is really useful idea. Thank you, Tom.

I love absolutely everything about the July 1, 2008, Christopher Niemann column in the New York Times: the writing; the blocky yet somehow warm illustrations; the idea of the children’s’ love for the subway and the way they’ve integrated the maps, routes, colors, and schedules into everything they do; the at once painful and funny part about Gustav’s heartbroken wail, “Local…I want the local.”

This is design getting it just right.

[via kottke.org]

Check out this great melding of music and info design - a commerical for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. As you ride, you “feel” the notes - it gets especially clear as you reach the end of the piece where you can anticipate each note as you see it come over the horizon.

[via VSL]

Information Design Patterns is the web site supplement to Christian Behrens Master thesis “The Form of Facts and Figures”. For each pattern (tree diagram, sparkline, slider, scatterplot, etc.), he includes a description, a sample layout, and a real-world example. This seems like a nice start. I can’t wait for the book!

 [via coudal partners]