Every so often I like to prop for various online sites that are trying to open up scientific content. PLoS, the Public Library of Science, is probably the best known.

Today I want to point you to "Many Eyes", an IBM-sponsored site for the free sharing of data visualizations. Data viz is a long-standing hobby of mine. As an interaction designer, much of the problem space I work in comes down to getting people to notice the right things at the right time, usually from a visual representation.

Many Eyes is still labeled "beta" but they appear to be trying to do a whole lot of things, including providing community features and tools for participants to create new visualizations that are organized into topic hubs. They list their goal as

to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis.

(Full disclosure: one of the main forces behind Many Eyes is Fernanda Viégas, whom I knew back the Media Lab days.)