Now even programming nerds and develop hipsters are exposed to and can make maps in their native ecosystem! GitHub, sometimes called "social programming", is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. At the moment, GitHub is probably the most popular, and certainly the most "hip" open source code repository site.
On her interesting blog "Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings", Anita Graser, self-professed open source GIS and data visualization geek, shows how she created Space-time cubes for exploring the spatial dimension of Twitter streams.
An original visualization of phenology.
Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg (well known for their Many Eyes project) developed a software package to calculate the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. An interesting idea, a beautiful visualization. More info here
