In light of my personal view of Tangler as a potential Third Place of Learning I'm going to capture here some of the "best of Tangler"

Trendalyzer  (Gapminder)

Tangler: TED Discussion Group - Hans Rosling Demonstrates Trends

In a 2007 follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty.

Also  Included in this topic his is an embeded copy of his 2006 presentation. 

This is incredible from both a technology point of view and even more so from an understanding of the world perspective.... you can see and LEARN things you never thought you could... see the transitions from tables of incomprehensible data to the flow of living history through numbers....  

You can actually try your own visualizations using the software through a link available here:

Tangler: Technology News Group - Trendalyzer Software

Join the commversation there! 

Some more information on Gapminder: http://www.gapminder.org/  this site includes an actual use of the software to describe the public health development of  Sweden compared to the current status of other countries around the world.... In this first GapCast, Professor Hans Rosling shows how economic growth, public health and sexual rights have changed in Sweden during 300 years. In only 6 minutes he shows life expectancy and GDP per capita of Sweden from 1709 to 2004. With trendalyzer graphics he compares historic Sweden with countries of today. 300 years of Swedish progress covers today´s disparity from Sierra Leone to Japan. Wheras education of midwives started in 1709 it was only in the 1970íes that family planning was included in their training. Sexual rights came late in Sweden compared to progress in health and wealth.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Gapminder is a Foundation registered at Stockholm county administration board (Länstyrelsen) (reg. nr. 802424-7721). It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. Gapminder Foundation will advance software development that have been done earlier by the non-profit company Gapminder Ltd. Funding has been and is mainly by grants from Sida for the Trendalyzer project. Being a producer of global public goods Gapminder benefit from free and creative inputs from pilot-testers and other end-users in many institutions and organisations.

From a powerpoint presentation ("Flowerpoint") on the Gapminder website, comes this slide that indicates their ultimate game plan - circa 2004 !

Gotta love TED!

I'm here on D'la Soul's blog and wondering what the data link does in Google......

One of the pieces of Rosling's vision is that all the statistics gathered by both governement and ngo's will be made available on the web for 'mashup' purposes etc.  So data can be analyzed and used (with the proper visualization tools of the kind he and his group are working on) by the rest of us in social discourse and learning, planning, and developing programs based on the best information we collectively have rather than guesses.

He feels that the data is as important as the other links to 'digested' information normally found on the web... and so should properly be part of Google's search paradigm