Google has opened its data visualization tool and it's a gift to journalism.
Google Fusion Tables permits the creation of charts, tables and intensity maps with either available data on its site or one's own data.
As goes the new visual literacy, this is a large step in helping news organizations (particularly the smaller ones) gain greater sophistication and involvement in this area. As more data comes available, the simple Google interface ought to be of great assistance.
I decided to take its non-U.S. Academy Award winners table and convert it into a pie chart (below). It took all of about eight seconds.
