Audrey Watters

Audrey Watters is a technology writer and rabble-rouser with a Master's Degree in Folklore. She was working on a PhD in Comparative Literature, but chose instead to write about data, culture, education and technology outside of academia rather than finish her dissertation. Audrey has written for ReadWriteWeb, Huffington Post, and NPR.

Visualization of the Week: Global BitTorrent usage

A 24-hour look at world-wide BitTorrent activity.

This week's visualization comes from BitTorrent, which has created a time-lapsed video showing a day's worth of geo-located logins.

Strata Week: Data prospecting with Kaggle

Kaggle now accepting data before a contest, HP's Autonomy purchase comes into focus, Cloudera's new Hadoop distribution.

In this week's data news, Kaggle launches Prospect, HP unveils its big data plans, and Cloudera releases CDH4 (the latest version of its Hadoop distribution).

Visualization of the Week: 56 years of tornadoes

Data from NOAA is used to map the strength and paths of tornadoes.

John Nelson's visualization taps NOAA historical data to map tornado paths and strengths.

Strata Week: MIT and Massachusetts bet on big data

MIT and Massachusetts plan a big data initiative, Cisco predicts the Internet's big data future.

MIT announces a big data research center, Cisco predicts the future of the Internet (in zettabytes), and open data startup Junar announces seed funding.

Visualization of the Week: 30 years of tech IPOs

How Facebook stacks up against other tech IPOs.

This week's visualization comes from The New York Times and compares the last 30 years of tech IPOs (hint: watch for the big blue dot).

Strata Week: Visualizing a better life

A visualization tool from the OECD, concerns about open data and research, and updates to Hadoop.

In this week's data news, a visualization tool charts your "better life," researchers have concerns about access to data, and updates to Hadoop.

Visualization of the Week: Urban metabolism

Visualizing cities' energy usage, population density, and material intensity.

This week's visualization is an interactive web-mapping tool that lets you explore energy usage, material intensity and the overall "urban metabolism" of major U.S. cities.

Strata Week: Google unveils its Knowledge Graph

Google shows off its Knowledge, Yahoo stumbles, and a bill cuts some census funding.

In this week's data news, Google updates its search features with a Knowledge Graph, while the U.S. House of Representatives de-funds surveys that helped businesses construct theirs.

Visualization of the Week: Avengers Assemble

Jer Thorp visualizes the history of "The Avengers."

In this week's visualization, The New York Times' data artist Jer Thorp visualizes the appearances of "The Avengers" in the comic book series.

Strata Week: Big data boom and big data gaps

One report says the Hadoop market is booming while another says federal data usage isn't.

In this week's big data news, an IDC report points to the booming market for Hadoop and MapReduce (and if proposals for Strata are any indication, this is indeed a good time for big data).