Infographics and data visualization works so well because the human brain is extremely well-equipped to process visual information. We can capture patterns and essential themes in huge data sets very, very quickly through visual means. Unfortunately, infographic software and data visualization tools to create these visual representations are usually difficult and too expensive for smaller publishers, news organizations and everyday citizens to use, creating a gap for the future of community journalism and media marketing. Hopefully, this list of free infographic software and data visualization tools will help you to manage your data and build better visualizations.
1.Tableau Public
Tableau Public is a free data storytelling application. Create and share interactive charts and graphs, stunning maps, live dashboards and fun applications in minutes, then publish anywhere on the web. Anyone can do it, it’s that easy—and it’s free. One of the best free infographics software available for free.
2.Weave
Weave is a new web-based visualization platform designed to enable visualization of any available data by anyone for any purpose. Weave is an application development platform supporting multiple levels of users – novice to advanced – as well as the ability to integrate, analyze and visualize data at “nested” levels of geography, and to disseminate the results in a web page.Take a look at this demo of Weave infographic software:
3.VIDI
VIDI is a suite of powerful intuitive Drupal data-visualization modules for anyone to use on any standard set of data ranging from government databases to demographics and statistics.
4.Prefuse – visualization toolkit
Prefuse is a set of software tools for creating rich interactive data visualizations. The original prefuse toolkit provides a visualization framework for the Java programming language. The prefuse flare toolkit provides visualization and animation tools for ActionScript and the Adobe Flash Player.Prefuse supports a rich set of features for data modeling, visualization, and interaction. It provides optimized data structures for tables, graphs, and trees, a host of layout and visual encoding techniques, and support for animation, dynamic queries, integrated search, and database connectivity. Prefuse is written in Java, using the Java 2D graphics library, and is easily integrated into Java Swing applications or web applets. Prefuse is licensed under the terms of a BSD license, and can be freely used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
5.StatSilk
StatSilk offers a range of web-based and desktop software to cater to diverse mapping and visualization needs. StatSilk software has a common purpose: to make data analysis easy, efficient and enjoyable. Creators of StatSilk firmly believe that software should adapt to your needs, and not the other way around. Their clients include educational institutions, government agencies, UN organizations, international non-profits and Global 500 companies. This demo shows how to create interactive maps in 5 min by using StatPlanet – interactive mapping & visualization software:
6.Gephi
Gephi is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs or infographics.Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Gephi is open-source and free:
