Motion Chart is a free interactive chart in Google Spreadsheet (an online spreadsheet similar to excel). In motion chart you can convert your data-series into a Gapminder-like graph and put it on your web-page or blog. All you need is a free Google account.
Here is a quick guide:
1. Go to drive.google.com and log in to your Google account.
2. Decide what you want to show as bubbles (e.g. countries) put those in column A
3. The second column is for time (e.g. Years)*
4. Following columns are for your data (e.g. life expectancy, GDP, population). The value in these columns can be numbers or texts. If you use only numbers, this column will appear on x- and y-axis as well as bubble-size and the menu for colour. If you have a text-string it will only appear in the drop down menu for colour.
5. Click Insert > Chart… (Choose Trend > Motion Chart)
6. Click Insert.
To change what columns/rows you want as range click the little arrow in right corner and choose Advanced edit. The finished Gadget can then be added to any web-page or blog by clicking the little arrow on right corner (choose Publish chart). It should look like this (feel free to click around)
* The Time-value can be in different formats:
◦ Year – Example: 2008.
◦ Month, day and year – 08152008
◦ Week number – Example: ‘2008W03’.
◦ Quarter – Example: ‘2008Q3’.