Excellent article… Exactly what I was looking for on exactly the solutions I had in mind: Swivel [6], Many Eyes [7], and Tableau Public [8]
As Google (Public Data Explorer [9]) and Microsoft (Pivot [10]) are getting into the mix of online data visualization tools, it is evident that this is a realm to carefully watch. Public data is de rigeur and blogs in this field are becoming ubiquitous, hence the perfect storm for online visualization. While public data is not necessary for online viz, it certainly makes it easy for the masses to enter the fray of data analytics.
Would be nice to add a few other platforms/solutions to this review, but should already be very interesting and valuable.
Check it out: http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/04/social_visualization_software_review_swivel.html [11]
Links:
[1] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/data
[2] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/internet
[3] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/software
[4] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/visualization
[5] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/web
[6] http://www.swivel.com/
[7] http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
[8] http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/
[9] http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/03/google_public_data_explorer.html
[10] http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/03/live_labs_pivot_massive_interactive_zoom_on_complex_data_ted_talk.html
[11] http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/04/social_visualization_software_review_swivel.html