An interesting visualization hack
On the Google Finance pages you can get graphs of stocks, which if you mess with the “settings” tab, you can also display after hours trading. After hours trading is generally much lower volume and less volatile compared to normal hours.
Notice on the image that the 7 normal hours seem rather large compared
to the 17 off hours. The X axis is a nonuniform time axis, during normal
hours it is 12 pixels/hour (a very programmery value to pick) but the
off hours are about 7.6 pixels/hour (not a very programmery value, but
perhaps it is really 2⁄3 of 12).
The end result is a harmonious display but with greater resolution in the more important data. Very nice.
(The sample graph is from the day Steve Jobs announced his medical leave from AAPL. Usually after hours is quite boring.)