For continuous World Cup coverage, check out Mashable’s 2010 World Cup Hub, which will be updated throughout the games.
The New York Times has added another World Cup visualization to the mix with its “Top World Cup Players” feature that resizes players based on the amount of buzz they’ve received on Facebook during a given day.
Launched earlier today, the visualization includes a slider that lets you jump from day-to-day of the World Cup and see which players got the most buzz, as measured by the amount of status updates, wall posts and likes that mention their name. You can also sort by country, player or buzz rank.
Not surprisingly, the results correlate fairly closely to the given day’s action on the field. Today, for example, players from the Netherlands and Brazil are biggest, as they played a game this morning. The Times offers explanatory text for each day though so you can quickly figure out how the player sizes came to be. In all, it’s another fun and visual way to see what’s been happening in the World Cup.
Check out our gallery of other World Cup visualizations below:
World Cup 2010 Replay
The Guardian has put together an application -- World Cup 2010 Twitter replay -- that creates high-speed replays for each World Cup match. Prepare to be amazed as you relive the entire game through Twitter animation. Action is portrayed via topic bubbles that enlarge as conversation swells on Twitter.
The Guardian set out to let people "see the roar of the crowd passing through Twitter." They certainly succeeded on their mission.
2010 FIFA World Cup Live Tracker
The Live Tracker application is like an ongoing World Cup analytical dashboard with visual stimuli. The tracker bears a striking resemblance to Sprint's Now Network site and includes blocks of World Cup trivia -- think total whistle blows, number of saves, cumulative worldwide audience, goals scored and even vuvuzela noise levels -- that football fans the world round will love.
This visualization may be a little heavy on Castrol promotion, but it's hard not to get excited when presented with these interesting factoids.
South Africa 2010 Twitter Buzz
CNN's Twitter Buzz application is unbelievably simple and yet absolutely stunning. The application tracks World Cup tweets by teams, players and topics. You can check out the current flow of tweets or scroll through the past 24 hours.
Given Twitter's recurring issues, one can except the Fail Whale to hinder the sheer awesomeness of the visualization from time to time, but CNN has created their very own amusing "Fail Ball" for you to look at during Twitter hiccups.
LivePitch for iPad
About a month ago, Mint Digital released a concept for an iPad app that would visualize match play by mapping ball possession on a digital football field. Just yesterday their vision became a reality when LivePitch was released as a free iPad application.
The application is designed to compliment your World Cup viewing experience as a second screen. You can watch in real-time as possession changes from player to player via the interactive football field. Stats-aholics can also dive into the Stats tab or select individual players for detailed and real-time player data on passes, goals, tackles and shots.
Calendar World Cup 2010
The Calendar World Cup 2010 turns the massive event's schedule into a wheel of visually stimulating information. Simply move your cursor to hover over a date, city or team and you'll get a glimpse at the associated matches.
Calendar World Cup 2010 by MARCA.com is simply a colorful way to keep track of the overwhelming schedule, but it's also proven quite popular with over 176,000 likes on Facebook thus far.
World Cup Match Tracker
As part of their World Cup coverage, the New York Times has created a match tracker application to supplement their Goal blog. The application boasts impressive minute-by-minute data overlaid on a soccer field so you can visualize passes, goals and shots for the duration of the game.
If you're feeling lazy, the Overview tab will breakout game data in a nifty line graph. You can also check out player rankings for touches, passes, goals, fouls and balls won. It's fantastic to behold and super fun for stats addicts to toy with.
Total Football 2010 for iPhone
If you're total nerd for World Cup game data then Total Football 2010 for iPhone will more than satisfy your match analysis cravings. The $2.99 app is worth every penny as it presents advanced statistical analysis for head-to-head comparisons between teams or players, all with visual finesse. Stats include shots, passes and tackles with users able to look at a game in its entirety or use the slider to pinpoint a particular moment for a more focused perspective.
Given that updates are in near real-time, you can also use this app as your play-by-play cheat sheet for games that you're not able watch on television. There's even a 'Player Influence" feature for identifying the players making the biggest impact in a particular match.
More About: media, new york times, visualization, world cup
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