Gapminder World 2006

Gapminder is a non-profit venture that develops information technology for provision of free statistics in new visual and animated ways. In short, it enables you to make sense of the world by having fun with statistics. Their method is to turn boring data into enjoyable interactive animations using Flash technology.

The statistics on their site can be viewed in either interactive charts or maps. This is one of the most innovative statistical dataviewers I've come across and is certainly an impressive demonstration of the power of Flash.

Gapminder is a Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. Funding has been mainly by grants from Swedish International Development co-operation Agency, Sida. In collaboration with United Nations Statistic Division they promote free access to searchable public data and their animations of different types of data are freely available at http://www.gapminder.org

via Gapminder site