Came across the "Matrix-Style App Wall" at Apple's WWDC event in San Francisco (via techcrunch.com). This is a beautiful visualisation that I had to share. It shows in almost realtime software purchases on the Apple iphone applications store.
The visualization is made up of about 16 Apple Cinema Display monitors mounted on a wall. It shows what looks to be a giant canvas that "ripples" as you watch - like pebbles thrown into a still pond. The canvas itself is made up of 20,000 icons (no, I didn't count them, but trust me), arranged by color, representing about 40% of the applications available in the App Store. I wonder how they chose which apps to include?
Each time a purchase is made of a particular app, the related icon pulsates with a 5 minute delay. Over 3,000 apps are downloaded every minute from the App Store but it doesn't look like 3,000 pulses are happening a minute. I suspect some sort of filtering but ultimately, who cares? The visual effect is beautiful:
Not quite as cool as the original matrix but that "throbbing" is something else.
Here are a couple of photos:
25th June 2009, 04:40 PM
A Beautiful Visualisation 
Similar Threads 
Linear Mode
