These are two sets of interactive infographic maps that measure each country against each other using loads of indexes.

It is interesting how almost all of the indexes are mutually exclusive. It's funny to imagine what would need to be different in our world for the the content to be reversed (a world where Newsweek media posts 'Vision of Humanity' and an Independant NGO posts something similar to the World's Best Countries'.)

1. The World's Best Countries (According to Newsweek)

Newsweek recently unveiled a fascinating interactive infographic that enables users to click through a thorough study that ranks nations by health, education, economy, and politics across the globe. Finland came in first place, and Switzerland and Sweden trailed closely behind.

2. Vision Of Humanity

This interactive website focuses on the major issues facing us in the 21st century and tries to bring a balanced approach with factual information that is positive and solution based. They hope to help you make better choices to create the kind of future in which you wish to live.

This year 149 nations of the world have been ranked by their peacefulness and the results have stimulated some very interesting analysis.

ATT: Mobile Phone Application Enthusiasts.

Online MBA created an interesting infographic that explores how these millions of tiny programs filter our world, and why there are so many of them being developed.

Of interest to me:

APPLE DENIED: 37,466 apps are no longer available for download by Apple.

PUBLISHERS: 42,403 publishers of apps (averaging 4 apps per publisher).

ATT: Digital Planners, Web Producers and Good Developers

Here is an interesting tool that might help you plan a digital campaign around the launch of a particular technology. And if you know your browser splits (by region) then you can probably figure out how many are likely to engage and interact with your digital campaign (when it goes to market).

Click here in this to play with the interactive version http://html5readiness.com

Courtesy of the asylum, run by Paul Irish and Divya Manian

MY SOURCE TRAIN (because I love giving credit and distribution is important): Delivered to my inbox today, 1pm, 21st April 2010, by Manfred Linzner via Posterous Subscriber Feed // Published By Chris Bowler, 19th April 2010 // Design and implementation notes published by Divya Manian, 17th April 2010.

Fortunately this article D.I.Y Culture, by Michael Kimmelman, New YorkTimes, caught my attention this morning amongst the hundreds of impressions that I had already been exposed to before 7am. The image is courtesy of Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.

I was lucky that it caught my attention when it did otherwise it would have disappeared into a bunch of haphazard morning activities (ordering coffee and texting, recalling the top three ethereal thoughts I had as I woke up, emailing, reading news, checking voicemail, rescheduling meetings, organising a date for the weekend, deciding what to get my niece for her 2nd birthday, following up last nights conversation about a deal that I am supposed to close this week) before actually looking at my official to do list for the day.

I reckon Kimmelman is so on point with his story. I like it a lot. It demonstrates clear insight and understanding into what culture truly is and highlights the "..very forces of globalism that were expected to erode local cultures are helping to preserve them."

FAVOURITE QUOTES (from the article)

"A generation or more ago, aside from what people did in their home or from what's roughly called folk or outsider art, culture was generally thought of as something handed down from on high, which the public received."

"..to restore civilization in West Germany by supporting a kind of ecosystem of small publishers and small bookstores to which, in certain small towns, trucks that delivered books to the bookstores overnight also delivered drugs to the drugstores: drugs for the body, books for the mind, a metaphor of recovery."

"The myth of an avant-garde serves the same market forces avant-gardism pretends to overthrow..", and "Art doesn't actually overthrow anything except itself.."

"..culture identifies crucial ruptures, rifts, gaps and shifts in society", and "..it helps reveal who we are to ourselves, often in ways we didn't  realize in places we didn't necessarily think to look."

"..Gazans, like that Swedish Ikea designer, made their own culture from the bricolage of global choices."

"Hollywood and Broadway, the major museums and art fairs and biennials and galleries, buildings designed by celebrity architects and the music business are all the traditional focus of big media, and they tell us a lot about ourselves. They constitute our cultural firmament.." and "Most culture is dark matter."

The image is courtesy of Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.

THE TEST

I have used this article to test how fast I can publish something from the moment I experienced it, whilst simultaneously waking up and preparing for work day (which incidentally started an hour ago). Experienced at 6:30am. Published 9am.

THE HEADING

The "handshake" part in the heading relates to how handshakes differ from place to place.