I hate to name drop, but a couple of weeks ago when I was at TED (there, I said it) there was a great presentation from the audience by Christian Marc Schmidt on a project he has been working called "Invisible Cities".

Basically he has taken the data out of social networks and re-presented over a map of New York, to produce quite a different landscape. The peaks are no longer mighty skyscrapers, but rather popular key words, which change over different times of the day.

Invisible Cities from Christian Marc Schmidt on Vimeo.

His was not the only example of using data from social media, from cameras recording behaviour, from cell phones (we had a great example of Italy winning a football game and how that affected the use of cell phones over the match - everything was dead quiet during the penalty shoot out, then BOOM!) etc. That data was then transformed into a visual picture - a moving image showing you a sometimes familiar experience that was augmented or completly re-visioned to paint a whole new picture.

Data visualisation has been around for a while, but I can see it becoming more common now. Data itself is more accessible and we're all getting more clever at how to make it more meaningful for others.

I'd love to see the patterns of coffee drinking, you tube watching, tweeting and when brilliant ideas are formed in our office ...