Kiva Growth

This animated GIF shows how Kiva has grown over time. I got this idea from animated GIFs on Wikipedia showing the rise and fall of empires. I like the idea of Kiva conquering the world.

The images were generated using Google Charts API, saved as individual files, and then animated using Inkscape and GIMP. Querying the data wasn't very difficult, but creating the animation was a lot harder than I had anticipated. I'd like to build more animated and interactive visualizations, but my skills in this area are weak. If there are any Kiva geeks out there with web or flash skills and an idea for some shiny new widget, I'd be happy to provide you with some data.

Introduction

On this blog I plan to post visualizations and information based on data from Kiva.org, an awesome micro-lending organization (that I am not affiliated with). Kiva released large amounts of data through publicly available APIs in the beginning of 2009, and I've been playing with their data for several months now. I've already put together charts, maps, statistics, and a SQL interface on my website, KivaData.org.

This blog is for introducing some new ideas, and hopefully generating some discussions about the information. My goal is to post some new information at least once a week. If there's any information you're curious about, please don't hesitate to ask. I am always looking for opportunities to collaborate with other people.