You may be using or heard of Microsoft Excel, PowerPivot, Power View, Microsoft Visio and Microsoft SQL Reporting Services for Data Visualization but here are a list of tools from Microsoft Research, SQL Azure Labs and BI Labs:

Name Description Try It
LayerScape

A cloud-based user experience, Layerscape employs powerful, everyday tools to analyze and visualize complex Earth and oceanic datasets—enabling scientists to gain environmental insights into Earth. Users can create and share 3-D virtual tours based on their discoveries and collaborate with the Earth-science community in ways that previously seemed impossible. Build your own virtual tours and experience the possibilities.

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Video
Chronozoom “Big History” is a new and emerging field that attempts to unify the past — all of the past — from the beginning of time, through the four major historic regimes of Cosmic, Earth, Life and Human history, up to the present. With ChronoZoom, you can browse history, rather than digging it out piece by piece. ChronoZoom covers the entire span of time, from the Big Bang, to the time of the dinosaurs, to the present. ChronoZoom is a new exciting tool for the emerging field of “Big History.” LINK
Video
Dataset Viewer DataSet Viewer is a simple standalone menu-driven tool for quickly exploring and comparing time series, geographic distributions and other patterns within scientific data. DataSet Viewer combines selection, filtering and slicing tools, with various chart types (scatter plots, line graphs, heat maps, as well as tables), and geographic mapping (using Bing Maps). The resulting views can be exported as images or movies, or bundled into an interactive package that be shared with colleagues. LINK
Video
Data Explorer

Have you ever had trouble finding data you needed? Or combining data from different, incompatible sources? How about sharing the results with others in a web-friendly way? If so, we want you to try Microsoft Codename “Data Explorer” Cloud service.

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FetchClimate FetchClimate is a fast, free, intelligent climate information service that operates over the cloud to return exactly the information you need. FetchClimate can be accessed either through a simple web interface, or via a few lines of code inside any .NET program. FetchClimate is intended to make it easy for you to retrieve information for any geographical region, at any grid resolution: from global, through continental, to a few kilometres, and for any range of years (1900 – 2010), days within the year, and / or hours within the day. FetchClimate can also report the uncertainty associated with the values it returns and list data sources used to fulfil the request. When multiple sources could potentially provide information on the same environmental variable, FetchClimate automatically selects the most appropriate data source. Finally, the entire query you ran can be shared as a single URL, enabling others to retrieve the identical information. LINK
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World Wide Telescope From web to desktop to full dome planetarium, WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables you to explore the universe, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world and combining it with 3D navigation. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky. You can research and import your own data and visualize it, then create a tour to share with others. LINK
Excel Addin
PivotViewer The Silverlight PivotViewer makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data on the web in ways that are powerful, informative, and valuable. PivotViewer lets us present thousands of things at once and visualize them in a way that exposes value from the group. LINK
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Data Hub Information drives today’s business environment. Enable your knowledge workers to spend less time searching for the data they need and more time analyzing and sharing it. Create your own enterprise "Data Hub" and empower your knowledge workers to more efficiently get the information you need to drive your business to the next level. LINK
Social Analytics

Microsoft Codename "Social Analytics" is an experimental cloud service. It’s aimed at developers who want to integrate social web information into business applications. This lab includes:

  1. The Engagement Client, used to browse and view analytics on a social dataset

  2. Two pre-defined, actively streaming datasets which include data from top social sources such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums

  3. The Social Analytics API, based on the Open Data Protocol and delivered through the DataMarket on the Windows Azure Marketplace

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