charts

Facebook is even more omniscient than you thought: it can now chart the world's collective hopes and dreams and highs and lows--sort of, at least.

The company's data team on Monday launched a trippy new application called the "Gross National Happiness Index." Taking a similar format to its "Lexicon" trend-tracking product, the "GNH" currently displays a graph of data tabulated over the course of the past few years to track the "happiness" of Facebook users based on words picked up in their status messages.

The GNH is currently restricted to … Read more

OmniOutliner is a popular, long-lived tool for building and organizing informational outlines--whether you're taking notes for a class, building out a complex project spec, or anywhere in between. OmniOutliner can help you create rich, multi-column, collapsible outlines in almost any style or format, with support for embedded notes, images, links, and more. Novices will have an easy time getting started with this flexible app's well-designed interface, but there's also plenty of room for power users to learn and exploit OmniOutliner's more heavy-duty features, including batch searching and support for AppleScript.

Given the abundance of competitive "… Read more

MB Feng Shui Suite provides users with five tools to align their life and home to feng shui beliefs. While some overwhelm with complicated terminology, the bulk of the program is simple to follow and helpful.

We were fortunate that the program's interface was so intuitive, since it only has a few areas that can be controlled, because the Help file was more focused on the design company than on using the program. We really only needed to fill in personal information, such as our birthday and our name, to get the program moving. With this information, the program'… Read more

GS-Calc offers users an alternative spreadsheet maker by mimicking what the more famous versions do and adding little flourishes that many will like.

The program's interface will immediately be recognizable to those familiar with Excel. The rows, columns, and even commands feel like they are in the same place. However, if users need help with its slight difference, a Help file is available. The program functions almost exactly like the more popular spreadsheet option. Users input data into cells across various rows and columns. The data can be manipulated in multiple ways, including color-coding cells, rows and columns, sorting … Read more

Reunion is a popular, long-lived, Mac-only genealogy program that can help you organize, view, and show off your family tree. Of the many genealogy options out there, Reunion tends toward the higher end, but it comes with many extras--and boasts a long, stable track record--to justify its price.

This app comes with much of the functionality you might expect, making it easy to quickly add family members (with predictive text), fill out notes and various data fields, cite source documentation, quickly perform searches, import data from other programs (essentially, from any app that uses GEDCOM files), and even run customized … Read more

MB Vedic Astrology Divisional Charts provides users with their Rashi and Divisional charts. Users who are already familiar with Vedic astrology may find this useful, but novices are likely to be confused by the program's lack of explanation.

Like other Mystic Board software, the first screen is a mess of Mystic Board advertising. After that, the interface is basic and moderately attractive. Users enter information about the time and place of their birth, and the program then provides the charts, as well as Vedic details and planetary positions. Although the program does explain what various aspects of the chart … Read more

MB Astrology Birth Chart lets users view birth charts from several different astrological traditions. Although the birth charts are fine, the ad-filled interface leaves something to be desired.

The first screen of the program is so cluttered with ads for Mystic Board, the program's publisher, it's hard to find the small button that allows you to continue to the program itself. Once there, users enter the date, time, and location of their birth, and the program displays the birth chart in Vedic North Indian Style, Vedic South Indian Style, Vedic East Indian Style, or Western Style. The charts … Read more

MB Biorhythm Chart Software lets users view their biorhythm charts over a 28-day period. Whether the charts have any validity, we can't say, but the program does perform as described.

As with other programs from Mystic Board, Biorhythm Chart's first screen is a jumble of advertisements from Mystic Board, and it's not entirely obvious how to continue. Once on the second screen, users enter their birth date and the date that's in the middle of the time period they wish to analyze. The program then provides a chart with three different-colored parabolas representing physical, intellectual, and … Read more

Tinderbox is a professional-grade information-management tool for creating, organizing, using, and sharing notes--especially large or complex sets of data, whether you're composing a novel, drafting a presentation, or performing academic research. Tinderbox has a very visual interface that provides a lot of flexibility, giving you multiple options for viewing notes (in map, outline, chart, treemap, or explorer windows), which you can drag and drop into hierarchical "containers" along with various contextual properties and links. A powerful, open-ended system of "agents"--basically, persistent searches--scans your notes continuously, identifying patterns or attributes and then executing macro-like actions. … Read more