Going off the grid –with a blog to prove it

Larry Lessig never ceases to impress. This week the Harvard law professor, blogger, author, and authority on intellectual property rights went off the grid to spend time with family.

So he effectively put up a ‘closed for business’ sign on his blog.

Lessig calls it a “tiny compensation for (almost) spending more time on the road than at home each year.”

Visualization takes big leap in New York Times

Follow up to my post on storytelling using higher form of visualization. The New York Times online has started using some really mind-blowing graphics that go beyond illustrating the story. I am not even sure we could call this treatment information graphics.

Take a look at this story on disease and genetics. Redefining disease, genetics and all. The story is about disease mapping, and the illustration literally maps what disease mapping could look like visually.

You can click on Myocardial Infarction (geeky word for heart attack) and it pops up a magnifying glass that you can then move around so it shows you the relationship between the disease and, say stroke, and SARS.

This is what great story telling online has been missing –creating an experience plus context that makes it engaging, and easy to grasp quickly.