Love this - great Data Viz launch from SimpleGeo & Stamen: Polymaps

Polymaps is a free JavaScript library for making dynamic, interactive maps in modern web browsers.

Polymaps provides speedy display of multi-zoom datasets over maps, and supports a variety of visual presentations for tiled vector data, in addition to the usual cartography from OpenStreetMap, CloudMade, Bing, and other providers of image-based web maps.

Because Polymaps can load data at a full range of scales, it’s ideal for showing information from country level on down to states, cities, neighborhoods, and individual streets. Because Polymaps uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to display information, you can use familiar, comfortable CSS rules to define the design of your data. And because Polymaps uses the well known spherical mercator tile format for its imagery and its data, publishing information is a snap.

Really beautiful experimental film- props JawboneTV! Blade Runner Revisited at Insane Resolution

An experimental film in tribute to Ridley Scott's legendary film 'Blade Runner' (1982). This film was made as a unique picture with a resolution of 60.000 x 60.000 pixels (3.6 gigapixels). It was made with 167,819 frames from the film.


(From Vimeo on the making of):

1>first step : the "picture" of the film
I extracted the 167,819 frames from 'Blade Runner' (final cut version,1h51mn52s19i)
then I assembled all these images to obtain one gigantic image of colossal dimensions : a square of approximately 60,000 pixels on one side alone, 3.5 gigapixels (3500 million pixels)

2> second step : an illusion
I placed a virtual camera above this big picture. So what you see is like an illusion, because contrary to appearances there is only one image. It is in fact the relative movement of the virtual camera flying over this massive image which creates the animated film, like a film in front of a projector.

source : Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (the final cut)
duration : 1h51mn52s19i > 167819 frames >>
one picture / format psb : 60 000  X 60 000 : 3 540 250 000 pixels >> 3,5 gigapixels
sound > from the original score by Vangelis
compositing> logiciel : Combustion. Mac pro 2X 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon. nombre de layers : 1!