- Slopegraphs — a nifty Tufte visualization which conveys rank, value, and delta over time. Includes pointers to how to make them, and guidelines for when and how they work. (via Avi Bryant)
- Ask Me Anything: A Technical Lead on the Google+ Team — lots of juicy details about technology and dev process. A couple nifty tricks we do: we use the HTML5 History API to maintain pretty-looking URLs even though it’s an AJAX app (falling back on hash-fragments for older browsers); and we often render our Closure templates server-side so the page renders before any JavaScript is loaded, then the JavaScript finds the right DOM nodes and hooks up event handlers, etc. to make it responsive (as a result, if you’re on a slow connection and you click on stuff really fast, you may notice a lag before it does anything, but luckily most people don’t run into this in practice). (via Nahum Wild)
- scalang (github) — a Scala wrapper that makes it easy to interface with Erlang, so you can use two hipster-compliant built-to-scale technologies in the same project. (via Justin Sheehy)
- Madlib — an open-source library for scalable in-database analytics. It provides data-parallel implementations of mathematical, statistical and machine learning methods for structured and unstructured data. (via Mike Loukides)
"analytics" entries
When good feedback leaves a bad impression
Panagiotis Ipeirotis on the vagaries of semantic analysis and Mechanical Turk's quirks.
In a recent interview, NYU Professor Panagiotis Ipeirotis explained why a "good" online review is often perceived negatively. He also discussed Mechanical Turk's growing pains.
Mobile analytics unlock the what and the when
Flurry's Sean Byrnes on mobile metrics and tablet apps vs phone apps.
Flurry's CTO Sean Byrnes discusses app life cycles, the specifics of user engagement, and the difference between smartphone apps and tablet apps.
Social data: A better way to track TV
Unlike traditional TV analytics, social data tracks both viewership and sentiment.
TV shows broke out of the television years ago, but traditional analytics still focus on limited metrics. PeopleBrowsr CEO Jodee Rich says social data offers a better way to see what audiences watch and what they care about.
Top Stories: August 29-September 2, 2011
Open data products with purpose, why finance should care about big data, and the untapped value of site search.
This week on O'Reilly: Tom Steinberg from mySociety offered practical advice for building useful and long lasting open data products, we examined the intersection of big data and finance, and we learned why neglected site search engines deserve way more attention.
The application of real-time data
Hilary Mason on how Bitly applies the Internet's real-time data.
In this interview, Bitly chief scientist and Strata speaker Hilary Mason discusses the application of real-time data and the difference between analytics and data science.
When was the last time you mined your site's search data?
Lou Rosenfeld on the benefits of parsing and refining site search.
A gold mine is hiding in the data generated by website search engines, yet many site owners pay little attention to the analytics those engines yield. Author Lou Rosenfeld explains why site search is worth your time.
Mobile metrics: Like the web, but a lot harder
Flurry's Sean Byrnes on the challenges of mobile analytics.
Flurry's Sean Byrnes talks about the intricacies of mobile analytics, the metrics app developers care about most, and the problems that stem from Android fragmentation.
Data and the human-machine connection
Opera Solutions' Arnab Gupta says human plus machine always trumps human vs machine.
Managing data and extracting meaning require new approaches, new education, and even a new language. Opera Solutions CEO Arnab Gupta discusses each of these areas in the following interview.
How data and analytics can improve education
George Siemens on the applications and challenges of education data.
Education theorist George Siemens discusses education data: its current state, how it can shape customized learning, and what lies ahead for education analytics.
