Google’s opening up its Public Data Explorer data visualization tool today, harping on a growing trend around data visualization and the utilization of large scale data markets.  Google’s Explorer currently supports 27 datasets and more than 300 metrics including government debt levels, internet speed statistics and so on, and is now available for individuals to upload personal datasets. This can be done thanks to a new XML-based data format Google developed named DSPL.

“Today, we’re opening the Public Data Explorer to your data. We’re making a new data format, the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL), openly available, and providing an interface for anyone to upload their datasets. DSPL is an XML-based format designed from the ground up to support rich, interactive visualizations like those in the Public Data Explorer.”

The DSPL language and upload interface are available via Google Labs, and the Public Data Explorer enables users to share, embed and publish imported datasets, on top of only visualizing them. Overall, the new DSPL format and the opened-up Public Data Explorer are optimized to expand Google’s database to just about every field the public can imagine. The company still addresses official providers to partner-up with it for the project, but its new crowdosurcing strategy may scale Data Explorer to completely new proportions.

In addition to Google, another company who’s been working around data visualizations is the Boston-based IPR. The management consultancy company announced a partnership with the Bilander Group for a new enterprise-level data integration and visualization software. The offering is called Binocle, and promises to deliver next gen data visualization to execs and upper managements.

IPR and Bliander’s  joint offering may prove to be the next big think in data visualization, but the two firms are not the only ones innovating in these field. Austin-based interactive agency Tocquigny was announced as a finalist for the 2011 SXSW Interactive Award in Kiosk/Installation for its Teradata Partners “At the Moment” Video Wall project. Thedata visualization platform was integrated with dozens of displays which projected 25 real-time unique sources including YouTube and stock indices.

The scientific community is also following then data visualization trend, and a piece in Science Magazine written by Peter Fox and James Hendler calls his peers to learn from  the web. That means utilizing visualization as a means of achieving greater research efficiency, rather than as a static end product.  Before visualization comes big data, which introduces increasingly powerful ways of utilizing information for factual benefit, foresight and introspective analysis. From consumer data to the academic field, Big Data is evolving faster and faster by the day.