For inspiration on how to present lots of data in a playful and informative way, check out this applet We Feel Fine. (found on information aesthetics, as usual.) It visualizes blog entries that refer to feelings, organized by time. The content is interesting enough, but I most enjoyed the non-traditional ways of presenting statistics and large amounts of data.

Here are some screenshots to get you interested in checking it out:

Selecting a random point in a large sea of data:

Ordered list of term frequencies:

Histogram with many datapoints missing:

Histogram with organic, animated blobs: