Brian Shaler

Two and a half years ago, I rendered a large heat map representing almost 100,000 Digg users and the 300,000 friendships between them. I used PHP/GD2 to render the image and it took quite a while to render. Due to the difficulty of redrawing it, the heat map was never updated. It would have been great if the heat map reflected current information, but instead it got to live on as a snapshot taken in 2007.

Since then, I’ve wondered about ways of rendering heat maps on the fly, ideally using the visitor’s CPU. Finally, in November, I was able to hack together a highly optimized Flash application that produces pretty awesome-looking heat maps (if I do say so myself) within a second or two.

Check it out

I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a bit of a tease for now, and not dive into too much technical detail. This project is part of a series of data visualizations that utilize a specific, lesser-known feature in Flash.

More from Brian Shaler

• Code and Beats
• Video: Making of a ‘ShalerJump’
• BitGravity Releases Free Flash Player
• Bubble Talk
• Sofa Jumping

Brian Shaler Recommends

• Gangplank in Downtown Phoenix  (Derek Neighbors)
• Selling in a “Down Economy”  (Chris Conrey)
• Methodologies in Time Tracking  (Track The Time)