Dipity is an amazing social timeline tool. I’m not gonna say too much - the timelines can speak for themselves.
My personal blog timeline:

TimeTube of Lady Gaga videos on YouTube

Archaeologist - Timeline of Digg

Embed Dipity within your LMS now!

Wibbit is a Media Wiki extension that allows tabular data to be dynamically converted to various visualizations such as maps, filtered tables and detail views. Essentially all the functionality of Exhibit is now easily implemented with some simple Wiki markup. It would be great to see this as a Confluence Plugin or Blackboard building block, if the license permits.

I had no idea that 3D printers even existed - they print 3D models. CAD files are rendered into static or working 3D models. This type of technology makes me wish I had more projects that could use this technology. Well even 1 project would do!

SIMILE, the team behind the awesome Timeline and Timeplot embedded visualization tools are also working on making mashups where no API exists super easy. Potluck allows web pages to be screen scraped and introduces a simultaneous editing technique that has to be seen to be believed. There is also a nice transformation of the MIT Course catalog, though it uses lots other other tools from SIMILIE, Potluck is not used.

I don’t condone Screen scraping but sometimes sites are so slow to introduce an API and improve usability/functionality. This is where tools like Greasemonkey and Potluck become useful.

Cayra is a new mindmapping/concept mapping app that produces very nice organic looking diagrams. It is built with .NET, free and only 3.5 Mb (but remember you’ll need .NET 3.5 installed as well). Great for educational use.

Well the n of the best lists from Smashing Magazine were certainly a highlight for me during 2007. My favs included:

• Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
  I have a growing interest in visualization and social network analysis. I think I spent a day just exploring all the examples.
• 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding
  I still have not had a chance to use AJAX in a project!!! Maybe in 2008!!!
• User Experience Of The Future
  One word - inspirational!
• 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
  RandomSyntax is in need of a new theme?
• 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
  Wow - a visual site map (diagram drawn with just CSS!!!

I know — Its just a graph, but still a cool visualization technique. Timeplot, from the same group that brought us Timeline, allows time based events to be overlayed on time series data. A great way to visualize trends and events. It comes complete with a step by step tutorial.

The concept is quite similar to Google Trends, but this time you get to supply the data and events.

I first encountered the Heatmap visualization in CrazyEgg. At the time I thought it was a nifty way to draw attention to popular sections of a site. Today via Ajaxian, I discovered an interesting jQuery plugin - aptly named “HeatColor“, which brings heatmap style visualizations to tabular data sets. HeatColor is a great idea and I can see it being useful in a number of scenarios to help a user identify/highlight areas of concern/interest. I will certainly be using it instead of sortable jquery plugins.