Hurricane Ike’s Aftermath

Like most Americans, I was caught up in the drama as Hurricane Ike approached and then hit the Gulf Coast last week. I have a daughter and son-in-law who weathered the storm in their home near downtown Houston. They got by with relatively minor damage in the scope of things, but their power has been out since the storm hit.

Yesterday, my other daughter who lives in Denver emailed me a series of photos showing Ike’s aftermath. I was astonished at the destruction. Here is a link to those 28 photos (and 5424 comments) showing the incredible challenge people in the path of this storm will have to deal with in the weeks and months ahead. My heart goes out to them. If you want to help, a donation to the Red Cross is a great place to start.

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Infographics

The science and art of infographics is intriguing. An example of an infographic was Monday’s post on Soda vs. Pop statistics. The purpose of infographics is to give people a quick, visual shortcut to understanding the relationship and meaning of many numbers and/or statistics. The New York Times online had a disturbing, but effective interactive infographic yesterday showing the incredible change in one year of the financial sector’s total stock market value and the the carnage of major players involved in that change.

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JavaFX Poised To Take On The Rich Internet Application Heavy Weights

JavaFX, a new platform and scripting language that can create rich GUIs using Java’s Swing, has created a stir in the development world lately, with its announcement at JavaOne earlier this year and the subsequent preview release of the SDK.

So what is it about JavaFX that has the java world buzzing?

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Can I Get You A Pop…Soda…?

Billions of dollars are spent every year on soft drink advertising in the United States. With this large expenditure, you would think a national consensus would arise on the term we use to offer someone a soft drink. Nope. The map below above shows a county by county breakdown across our whole country of what term people use to offer someone a soft drink.

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Who Spends What

The world’s free market economy still depends on spending to make the wheels turn. The New York Times had an interesting story and interactive graph recently that shows a visual comparison of spending by the world’s major (economic) countries. It makes you realize how large the U.S. economy ranks in five major categories:

• Clothing and footwear
• Electronics
• Alcohol and tobacco
• Household goods
• Recreation

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