In these troubled times, nothing soothes one’s anxiety like a cute info graphic. The video clip at left, for example, is a re-imagining of “Little Red Riding Hood”, told in helpful info-graphic form, with useful tooltips, and handy facts. Like grandma’s nutritional value, for instance. Even the corporate world is onto the fact that somehow life is just easier to digest in graphic form, which explains these examples of game-based training brought to us by BusinessWeek.com. This Japanese animation – Ensuring the Future of Food – makes consumer waste downright cute. And if you have a web site with lame traffic stats, just use VisitorVille to view the figures. Your web site is MUCH cooler when Google is represented by a cute little bus instead of a cold, heartless, data-harvesting bot that doesn’t visit your site as often or as deeply as you’d like. And then there’s The Sims. Do people still play The Sims? I’m a little out of the loop on stuff like that, but if they do, now they can buy their little imaginary info-graphic people imaginary little info-graphic furniture from Ikea. Speaking of the Sims, I can’t help think that a little misery might have also been spared if the sadists in the Bush administration had been given instructions on how to torture Sims instead.