Microsoft joins the fray

I wasn’t expecting Microsoft to get into the online data visualization game before Google, but here they are. Microsoft Research has launched DataDepot, “a site that lets you track, analyze, and share trend lines”. It looks like the development team has populated the site with plenty of initial datasets.

From a very quick first glance:

• Charts are rendered using SilverLight.
• You can embed charts via iframes.
• DataDepot refers to each chart as a “track”. There are also “combined tracks” which seem to be overlays of multiple charts with the same Y axis.
• Quality of the visualizations is so-so. Definitely superior to the Flash output from iCharts, but not as nice as Many Eyes or Swivel. Pointless shaded backgrounds. Bad color selection. The thumbnail image generated for the DataDepot home page is unintelligible.
• Data can be extracted from the site in an XML format.

(via Matt Hurst’s Data Mining blog.)