Perspective 6 - Bigger, Better, Faster

Farshad Nayeri January 21, 2016

We are elated to introduce Perspective 6, the result of more than one year of learning from collaboration with Perspective’s leading customers.

Perspective 6 is our biggest release yet; it includes major updates to all underlying engines: data, visuals, computation, and cinematography.

Given the breadth and the depth of changes in Perspective 6, we thought it best to highlight them ahead of time while we go through our formal release process.

We welcome your involvement! You may get an early access copy of Perspective 6 by sending an email to perspective+6@pixxa.com or tweet to @pixxa.

Perspective 6 Highlights

MORE DATA, FASTER
Faster, Smarter Import
Faster, refined Data Editor
Load up to 100k rows on a modern iPad or iPhone
Integrated feedback: directly report issues from inside a story to our team.
Smart Inspector: View instance values and edit in place, right from a chart.

MORE PRODUCTIVE WORKFLOW (+)
Smart Templates: Create one story, then instantiate with multiple datasets.
Load data directly into Perspective from Mac or PC. No Cloud Required.
Share your iPad screen to any Mac or PC. No App required.
Access databases in millions of rows. No IT department required.

VISUAL
Faster Bar Charts - Horizontal Charts, new labeling
Faster Bubble Charts, Discrete Axes, new labeling, sorting options
Scalable Line Chart - Logistic Scale, Scrub
Faster Area Chart, new sorting options
Flow Diagrams – Show flow of data in motion
Summary Scenes – Close Shot of a number
Video Scenes (*)
HTML Scene (*)
Faster Geo Scene scales to thousands of points
New Sorting and Labeling options across all types of scene

COMPUTATIONAL
Accumulate – label shows accumulated value of a dimension instead of just a single value.
Quasi Numeric Sort – For those pesky axis values such as <100 or 10+.
Improved Roll Ups - cluster like values in a dimension
Expressions - compute new values based on other dimensions on the fly. (*)

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Improved Zoom, Pan, Recording and Playback
Frame Aspect Ratio – Control of aspect ratio of the frame is given to the presenter.
Navigation – Link any label in one scene to other scenes, to navigate at present-time.

AND MORE
Over 200 bug fixes, improvements.

Key: (*) - Experimental — (+) Pro or Enterprise license required.

To get an early access copy of Perspective 6 contact us at perspective+6@pixxa.com or tweet to @pixxa.

Apple Financial Review and Forecast

Farshad Nayeri October 16, 2014

Perspective 5

Pixxa October 7, 2014

By now you should have received the Perspective 5 update. Our focus in Perspective 5 is to find more engaging ways to put stories together. Below are just some introductory notes on Perspective 5 features. We hope to elaborate on each one in upcoming posts.

Portrait mode lets you see your stories in a fresh new way. You will find many charts look better in Portrait. Why not just turn the device to get your point across more clearly.

Black is the new White. You can now create stories which have either white or black background. In practice, we have found black background more versatile and easier on the eye.

Blur effects. Area and Line charts include effects to blur the background data so you can focus on a single point.

More options to Share, using standard share sheet. You can share stories in many ways, you can even save scenes as Animated GIFs.

Data inspector in Line and Bubble charts to see the underlying data.

Improved Recording tracks precise movement in the story including going back and forth between scenes.

New Remix panel allows you to easily find old stories, or bring in new data and imagery from Wikipedia right into your stories.

Last but not least, hundreds of smaller bug fixes and improvements. And we are just at 5.0. Watch this spot for updates of the new features in Perspective 5.

Postmodern Computing Summit

Pixxa June 4, 2014

Ben Bajarin, Michael B. Johnson, Jean-Louis Gassee, Ben Thomson, James Allworth, and our own Horace Dediu were amongst the participants at Postmodern Computing Summit. Of course, all content was developed using Perspective—hard to imagine any other way to produce 50+ motion charts so quickly.