The Stephen King Universe

Are you a Stephen King fan? Have you yourself made these connections? From TessieGirl, The Stephen King Universe has been updated to include the many connections to the Dark Tower series.

When I was in Grade 5 (guess I was ten), my friend Tarnya Smyth brought her mum’s battered copy of Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’ to school. We broke it into about 4 pieces and passed them around, all taking turns reading each battered section. I told mum about it and she FLIPPED HER WIG and told me to ‘Stop reading that book immediately!!’ So I finished it.

Now, I TOTALLY do not recommend  ten year olds reading Stephen King books (messed me up good), but this was when my life long relationship with Mr King began. My love for his books is based around his characters. They are so full. I love Stephen King dialogue. I love his sense of humour. And I love the links and connections between the books. I am the kind of annoying person who likes to know the ‘In Joke’. So, of course, I MADE A FLOW CHART!!!

This chart is like my fourth child. Be kind to it. It means a lot to me.

I wish they had published a higher-resolution version online.  Some of the text is too small to read, but I think I can follow all of the connections.  A must have for any Stephen King fan!

Also, it’s available for purchase as a poster from the TessieGirl site for $25 plus shipping from Australia.  You can also see the original version.

Thanks to Becky for sending in the link!

Star Wars Infographic Flowcharts

Marc Morera has designed some amazing Star Wars infographics charting the character progression, deaths and conflicts in the Star Wars movies, the animated series, comic books and major novels.  On the landing page, you will find them organized chronologically, so the Animated Series fits in between movies II and III.

Characters are illustrated as recognizable isotypes.  Each character’s plot line is color-coded, and the lines from the appropriate characters converge at circles representing the major conflicts along each story timeline. 

The two examples shown here are reduced in size to fit on the blog, so go check out all of them on Marc Murera’s site for high-resolution versions.

Website Hosting Decisions

The Hosting Decisions, From the Chalkboard infographic from Rackspace UK Hosting helps customers to choose how to host their site with this visually decision map.

OK so you already know that we’ve been helping customers define their hosting needs for some years now.

But as customers adopt more service based computing resources like cloud hosting, it’s only logical that they will also now ask more of their hosting provider to ensure they are getting the correct solution.

So we thought hey, let’s produce an infographic to take customers through a simple decision making process on a route to the solution that’s right for them.

This one is a clear, focused topic.  Easy to read, and not a lot of illustrations or images to get in the way.  This decision for companies is actually a little more complicated, but the infographic does pose the right questions.

Thanks to Sav for sending in the link!

The Socially Optimized Business

Attributes of a Socially Optimized Business is a new, visual XPLANATION from the Dachis Group after acquiring the XPLANE company.  You can view it in SlideShare (they should have put it into Prezi), or download the high-resolution PDF.

What’s a Social Business? It’s a business alive with energy and big ideas. It’s collaborative, authentic, customer-centric, trusted, open and real-time.

And it’s about time. After decades of mechanistic, process-oriented management dogma, progressive organizations are waking up to the disturbing truth that they’ve squeezed all the creativity out of their business. But when companies embrace organic, passionate, socially-savvy initiatives, they blossom. That’s Social Business.

This would make a great poster!

Top 100 SciFi and Fantasy Books Flowchart

SF Signal has created The Top 100 SciFi & Fantasy Books Flowchart, a decision tree flowchart for NPR’s list of the top 100 books.  They have a high-resolution printable version available too.

Over the summer, NPR solicited the input of its listeners to rank the top science fiction and fantasy books of all time. Over 60,000 people voted for the top picks which were then compiled into a list by their panel of experts. The result? This list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it.

We at SF Signal have, once again, come to the rescue. This flowchart is designed to help you follow your tastes, provide context, and fulfill (indeed exceed!) any need for pithy commentary you might harbor.

I ended up on Hyperion, one of my all-time favorite series.  Bring on the Shrike!

Found on FlowingData

Client Infographic: How Affiliate Marketing Works

Recently, InfoNewt (my company) designed How Affiliate Marketing Works for Internet Marketing guru Rae Hoffman-Dolan and her site: Sugarrae.com.  You can see the high-resolution version here.

After spending over a decade in the Internet marketing industry, I think I often forget – and have failed to address – the most obvious question most folks new to the industry have about affiliate marketing.

When I appeared as a guest on Weapons of Mass Marketing earlier this week to discuss the topic of marketing affiliate programs, the hosts evidenced the importance of the often overlooked question by leading off their interview with a variation of it…

“How does affiliate marketing work?”

No numbers, no statistics, no data visualizations.  This infographic is visualizing a process, and I do many of these for clients.  Business processes, strategies, workflows, business models, flow charts and explanations of how things work.

In this case, characters on a simple path visualizes a process of 10 steps.  Way more interesting than a text numbered list in a blog post don’t you think?

You should follow Rae on Twitter: @sugarrae

Google's Collateral Damage

Another cool flowchart-style infographic by Jess Bachman for SEOBook.com.  Google’s Collateral Damage visualizes how Google’s evolving search algorithm is impacting the Web.

Google’s PageRank worked well until people realized what drove search & how to optimize for it. But the web moves much faster than the colleges do. A million spam pages are created every hour! Thus Google’s relevancy algorithms have grown in complexity over the years.

What Kind of Pasta is on Your Plate? #infographic

What kind of pasta is on your plate? by Charming Italy

Came across this great family tree/decision tree to help you identify the different kinds of pasta from CharmingItaly.com.  What Kind of Pasta is on Your Plate? breaks the pasta types down into shape families and uses some nice visuals to help you identify your pasta.

I’m an avid reader of Coolinfographics.com - some of the infographics you mentioned on your blog inspired me to create one for our blog as well. Unlike the usual chart- and fact filled graphics, we decided to create a somewhat educational infographic. It highlights the most common and/ or popular types of pasta, and helps you to identify the type of pasta on your plate.

I wish they would hang this up in the pasta aisle in the grocery store!

Thanks to Paolo for sending in the link!

Should I Work for Free? - a flowchart

Should I Work for Free? is a great decision tree flowchart from Jessica Hische.  Start in the middle and work your way out.  

I made this flowchart for my future students but I think it’s useful for pretty much any creative, myself included. Prints to come!

I’ve heard some of these rationales before…

Thanks for the link Erica!

World GHG (Green House Gasses) Emissions Flow Chart

From the World Resources Institute, the World GHG Emissions Flow Chart needs a new name, but shows the composition of GHG (Green House Gasses) emissions and where they come from.

Sources & Notes: All data is for 2000. All calculations are based on CO2 equivalents, using 100-year global warming potentials from the IPCC (1996), based on a total global estimate of 41,755 MtCO2 equivalent. Land use change includes both emissions and absorptions; see Chapter 16. See Appendix 2 for detailed description of sector and end use/activity definitions, as well as data sources. Dotted lines represent flows of less than 0.1% percent of total GHG emissions.

They also have this one for just U.S. GHG emissions:

Found on Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media