Fri

Sep 1
2006

Nat Torkington

Nat Torkington

A Day of Google

I love working from my kitchen table where I can see the tide go in and out during the course of the day. Buried in a Google paper about data analysis using map/reduce was the modern-day equivalent: this hypnotic view of a day of Google traffic on a map. It's intriguing how a lot of the world (Japan, East Coast US, some of Europe) never goes dark, even during night-time. Now, a real-time view of this would be a fantastic desktop background or wall image: an ambient display of the distribution of the world's melatonin, shifting as the day progresses.


tags:   | comments: 15   | Sphere It
submit:

 
Previous  |  Next

0 TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/4879

Comments: 15

  Richard Akerman [09.01.06 06:10 AM]

There is a realtime view on a screen in the Googleplex


Google Visualization - the Genesis Effect?

  Anthony [09.01.06 08:19 AM]

Digg has some realtime visualizations now, I wonder if they could work up something like this.

  eskimo_noise [09.02.06 10:13 AM]

PLEIX made a similar animation with webcams ( called NETLAG ) on their website ( www.pleix.net )

  Jeff [09.02.06 11:12 AM]

That's cool, I need to get my traffic like that LOL.

  Vic [09.02.06 12:08 PM]

Take that map, pause it at a bright point, compare it to a map of the planet earth at night(showing light pollution). Almost identical...even the little spots in Africa. So I guess that means everyone with electricity and lights uses google:).

  Tom Limoncelli [09.02.06 12:10 PM]

The picture is pretty cool, but did you notice that the paper is 3+ years old?

By the way... look at how Africa is dark 24 hours a day. That's a shame.

  Anand [09.02.06 01:31 PM]

Has Russia even heard about Google!!? :-o

  alex [09.02.06 01:48 PM]

Anand: Russia has a number of decent search engines (e.g. rambler.ru, yandex.ru).

  Bobo [09.02.06 02:08 PM]

Tokyo NEVER sleeps

  Nick Hodges [09.02.06 02:14 PM]

Saddest part is the big black hole of North Korea.

  Wildfire [09.02.06 03:16 PM]

LOL- Ain't nobody Googling in Antartica!!

  Amit Patel [09.02.06 04:04 PM]

Note the date of the image. They didn't choose this day randomly. There was a big blackout that day. Now look at the animation again and spot the blackout.

  Nanaman [09.02.06 06:07 PM]

Actually.. I think the continent of Africa is better served by having less access to the internet. Considering that most of the internet is filled with pornography, misinformation and gambling sites, one clearly sees why most of the world is addicted to it. It is very similar to a debit/credit card, wherein one can barely get by without it in today's society.

  K.C [09.03.06 07:52 PM]

It's to bad that Googles "to-from" traffic flow couldn't be seen (gateways and all), like the
aircraft flight pattern graphics presentations
shown here:
http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/index.html

  Kevin [12.01.08 09:18 PM]

Check out my new article on how to DOMINATE your niche and rank on the front page of Google for free..enjoy

http://ezinearticles.com/?Keyword-Research-Tracking-and-Keyword-Professional-Research&id=1721409

To Your Success,
Kevin Cook

Post A Comment:

 (please be patient, comments may take awhile to post)






Type the characters you see in the picture above.

RECOMMENDED FOR YOU

RECENT COMMENTS