Public preview of Excel “GeoFlow” - 3D cartographically distributed data maps.

DC member IainB writes:

Wow.
For a while now I have been playing with Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope, but I had not realised that it might lead to this "GeoFlow" exercise.
You can follow this up on the Excel blog, and you can get a download of the app via that route also.

Here's the post on the Excel blog which gives the background to the preview of this development. This looks like a bit of a statistician's "dream modelling tool" for presentation of data.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Public preview of project codename “GeoFlow” for Excel delivers 3D data visualization and storytelling
by Ari Schorr
on April 11

Today we are announcing the availability of the project codename "GeoFlow" Preview for Excel 2013, a result of collaborations between several teams within Microsoft. GeoFlow lets you plot geographic and temporal data visually, analyze that data in 3D, and create interactive "tours" to share with others.

GeoFlow originated in Microsoft Research, evolving out of the successful WorldWide Telescope project for scientific and academic communities to explore large volumes of astronomical and geological data. Researchers collaborated closely with the Office product team to usher GeoFlow from its research lab inception to this public preview availability in Excel. GeoFlow adds to the existing self-service Business Intelligence capabilities in Excel 2013, such as Microsoft Data Explorer Preview and Power View, to help discover and visualize large amounts of data, from Twitter traffic to sales performance to population data in cities around the world.

With GeoFlow, you can:

• Map Data: Plot more than one million rows of data from an Excel workbook, including the Excel Data Model or PowerPivot, in 3D on Bing maps. Choose from columns, heat maps, and bubble visualizations.
• Discover Insights: Discover new insights by seeing your data in geographic space and seeing time-stamped data change over time. Annotate or compare data in a few clicks.
• Share Stories: Capture "scenes" and build cinematic, guided "tours" that can be shared broadly, engaging audiences like never before.

Unlocking insights within geospatial data like ticket sales is now possible with GeoFlow.

To learn more about how people are already using GeoFlow to gain and share insights in conjunction with existing self-service business intelligence tools in Excel, go the Excel blog.

Download the Add-in for Excel 2013 with Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus 2013.

Find out more about Microsoft BI.