Hi All:
Some of you may remember an old Mac OS 7/8 utility called Data Thief. It was a handy little utility that enabled you to approximate the original data used to generate a chart. You would scan in the chart and then click once on each corner of the graph to define the area of the chart, then input the range of both axis's and lastly you would then click on each point in the chart (obvious not useful for Pie- chart ... but then it would be need for this chart type).
Well this handy little utility is back for Mac OS X in the form of a freeware program (however, certain features you need to pay for, but its only $8-USD) with the less sensational name of GraphClick. You can find it here:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_science/graphclick.html
Why would you want this type of application? Well, one example would be if you found a chart in a periodical that you wanted to use in a PowerPoint or Keynote, but a scan of the chart looked bad. GraphClick would let you extract the data (obviously with some minor level of error) and re-plot the chart in your favourite charting application. This clean chart could then be placed into your presentation. Of course this is still someone-else's data so make sure that you include the appropriate reference.
GraphClick won an Apple Design award at this years World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).
Cheers, Doug