Stricter auto emissions standards announced

President Barack Obama announced new standards Tuesday to curb vehicle carbon dioxide emissions by about one-third by 2016. A great occasion to use the excellent data from Purdue University. Under the Vulcan Project, they calculated carbon emissions per source, and made it available for a variety of geographic levels.

This first picture just use color coded county areas. the amount shown is the yearly total.

Then, I decided to study the differences between the total emissions, and the per capita emissions, to see if it would highlight differences due to legislation. For example, one can see that california emissions are not that dramatic, when seen per capita, due to their more drastic regulations. Click maps for higher resolution, and click here to see Beth Davidz flash interactive.

Obama 100 days

An interactive looking at the Obama administration’s major initiatives during its first 100 days. Developed by Kevin Vineys with data compiled by NRC, the AP research center.

Click to see Flash interactive

Bailout funds almost exhausted

The Treasury Department said Tuesday that $109.6 billion in resources remain in the government’s $700 billion financial rescue fund.But officials expect the fund will be boosted over the next year by about $25 billion as some institutions pay back money they have received. That would boost the fund to $134.6 billion.

A guide to the government intervention programs

Here is a new attempt to chart the government interventions. So far, $3.1 trillion were spent, which is 29% of the total $10.7 trillion authorized. I tried to find a system that would be easily understandable and would yet retains all the informations attached to each program. Payers, recipients, date of program launch, amount authorized, amount spent.

Adding up all government interventions

Since the beginning of the financial crisis, nearly $12 trillion was allocated in programs affecting the financial services industry. Today, the Federal Reserve announced a plan to cleanse toxic assets from bank balance sheets. Here’s the breakdown of all money spent since last year. I spent the day researching and realizing this graphic. Fun stuff.

[Updated at 2 p.m. March 24] The graphic was updated with reader comments, size of arrows were adjusted to reflect correct amounts. Thanks! Old version is here.

Lincoln and Obama

Most recent video, an animated short movie realized by Peter Hamlin with art from Mike Sudal. Jaime Holguin voice-over, research and script by Jake ‘Snake-Eye’ O’Connell. Most of the work time spent on this feature went to After-Effect, and of course, into the hand-drawn part.

Making sense of the stimulus package

Got this graphic made in the afternoon. Hard to keep the information clear and and also – our members favorite – small. Thanks to Damiko Morris for crunching the numbers. Excellent piece on the same subject from the Washington Post here. And yes Nigel, I think of you when I use this blue.

Click to see larger jpeg

Inauguration day

Here are some highlights of the AP multimedia production on Inauguration day.

Click to see a panorama of the event

Bernadette Tuazon acted as a technical advisor on this panorama and many others, working with photographer Susan Walsh to take and stitching pictures together. I used a modified version of an open source panorama player, PanoSalado to publish it.

Here is a 3-D rendering of the inauguration parade route, realized by Merrill Sherman with Jaime Holguin help.

A title card for AP video live on the web, featuring 3-D work of Peter Hamlin and editing from Jaime. AP staffers use Cinema 4D for 3-D rendering.

And finally, our inauguration widget, thanks to Matt Ford’s hard work.