Google Labs recently unveiled its latest toy, the Public Data Explorer. The tool adds visualization features to Google’s public data search engine, letting you make charts and graphs like this one, which overlays unemployment stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on a U.S. map. Colorful and cheery, right? All those lovely pale green circles (10% umemployment), flashes of orange (13%) and the occasional outburst of red (15%). Who knew that modeling depressing data could be so much fun!

Google – public data

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