Yet another competitor of Many Eyes, Swivel, Track-n-Graph, WidGenie and Trendrr (which will be discussed in the next post): iCharts [icharts.net] aims to optimize the creation, sharing and embedding of interactive charts in online websites, as well as in offline PDF and PowerPoint documents. As an additional feature, users are also able to add audio comments to the charts to convey the informational message more clearly.

The interesting TechCrunch50 demonstration video featured below shows how the founders consider the iCharts portal to be: "The YouTube for interactive charts". However, it seems that, in contrast to the YouTube example, the combination of the social web with data visualization does not really produce many (if any) "viral" information graphs, nor does it inspire a flood of lively comment discussions.

Via news.cnet.com, eagereyes.org and techcrunch.com.