cool real time data capture and display

Today's NYT online features an interesting interactive visual on the primary US news topic of the moment - the death of Osama Bin Laden. The Times poses two questions: How much of a turning point in the war on terror will Bin Laden's death represent? and What is your emotional response?

See full size, live image.

Readers can indicate how they feel about these questions along a scale ranging from insignificant to significant (y-axis) and from negative to positive (x-axis). In addition to picking a position, the audience can input comments, which pop up on the visual as new content is added.

I love that this doesn't pick a position, but instead lets users generate the content. At the time of my blogpost, the upper right quadrant (positive, significant) is the most densely populated (and I imagine this will continue to be the case). A quick read through some of the comments (possible by mousing over the cells) shows what is often true: the outliers are as interesting (in some cases more so) as the predominant trend.

What other ways could we use interactive real time visuals like this? Leave a comment with your thoughts.