"data visualization" entries

Fruit or mobile device: learning concepts through connections

Preview of insights shared at upcoming session at Strata Santa Clara

Social media gives us the power to share content and engage with a wide range of internet users. As a person or brand, we are often concerned with who we are talking to and how we can better serve our viewers. Traditional demographics such as ‘female’ and ‘25-30’ are no longer sufficient in this arena. For example, Google is having a hard time getting gender and age correct for ad preferences. It is more interesting to observe what content is consumed and how attention changes over time.

Bitly, which is used to shorten and share links, can offer insight into this space. This means the data has an unprecedented view into what people are sharing and has a holistic view of what users are concerned about on the internet.

We use their data to look into how we can define the audience of different content. The simplest example of this is: given a group of users that click on “oreilly.com”, what other websites do they engage with. We now have what bitly calls a co-click graph. Domains are represented as nodes while edges between nodes represent the number of people that have clicked on each domain. A co-click graph can be made to represent any number of attributes, but for now we are going to remain interested in topics and keywords.

ASmithFig1

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NASA launches second International Space Apps Challenge

In 2013, developers will once again boldly contribute code to projects where their code has never gone before.

From April 20 to April 21, on Earth Day, the second international Space Apps Challenge will invite developers on all seven continents to the bridge to contribute code to NASA projects.

space app challenge

Given longstanding concerns about the sustainability of apps contests, I was curious about NASA’s thinking behind launching this challenge. When I asked NASA’s open government team about the work, I immediately heard back from Nick Skytland (@Skytland), who heads up NASA’s open innovation team.

“The International Space Apps Challenge was a different approach from other federal government ‘app contests’ held before,” replied Skytland, via email.

“Instead of incentivizing technology development through open data and a prize purse, we sought to create a unique platform for international technological cooperation though a weekend-long event hosted in multiple locations across the world. We didn’t just focus on developing software apps, but actually included open hardware, citizen science, and data visualization as well.”

Aspects of that answer will please many open data advocates, like Clay Johnson or David Eaves. When Eaves recently looked at apps contests, in the context of his work on Open Data Day (coming up on February 23rd), he emphasized the importance of events that build community and applications that meet the needs of citizens or respond to business demand.

The rest of my email interview with Skytland follows. Read more…

Exploring web standards for high data density visualizations

A sneak peek at an upcoming visualization session from the 2013 Strata Conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Strata Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks, the Strata Community Site will be providing sneak peeks of upcoming sessions at the Strata Conference in Santa Clara. Nicolas’ sneak peek is the first in this series. 

Last year was a great year for data visualization at Twitter. Our Analytics team expanded and created a dedicated data visualization team, and some of our projects were released publicly with great feedback.

Our first public interactive of 2012 was a fun way to expose how the Eurocup was experienced at Twitter. You can see in this organic visualization how people cheered for  their teams during each match, and how the tension and volume of  tweets increased towards the finals.

NB StrataSC 2013 image1

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Visualization of the Week: Visualizing D.C. homicides

The Washington Post developed an interactive map using data from area homicides from 2000 through 2011.

Residents in Washington D.C., or citizens considering a move to D.C., have a new tool to assess the city’s homicide rate. As part of a 15-month investigative study, The Washington Post has created an interactive map of the homicides in D.C. from 2000 through 2011. The interactive tool lets users drill down into the information by demographic, motive and manner of murder, for instance — all of which can also be isolated by neighborhood or by individual homicide.

Click here for the full interactive map.

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Four short links: 9 May 2012

Four short links: 9 May 2012

Version Control for Real Stuff, Educators on Food Stamps, Gestural Exploration, and Book Marketing

  1. We Need Version Control for Real Stuff (Chris Anderson) — This is pointing us toward the next step, a GitHub for stuff. If open source hardware is going to take off like open source software, we need this. (via Evil Mad Scientist)
  2. Graduates and Post-Graduates on Food Stamps (Chronicle of Higher Education) — two points for me here: the inherent evil of not paying a living wage; and the pain of market signals that particular occupations and specialisations are not as useful as once they were. I imagine it’s hard to repurpose the specific knowledge in a Masters of Medieval History to some other field, though hopefully the skills of diligent hard work, rapid acquisition of knowledge, and critical thought will apply to new jobs. Expect more of this as we replace human labour with automation. I look forward to the software startup which creates work for people outside the organisation; the ultimate “create more value than you capture”.
  3. Explore Exoplanets with Gestural Interfaces — uses John Underkoffler’s Oblong gestural interface. Underkoffler came up with the Minority Report interface which has fed the dreams of designers for years.
  4. Book Marketing Lessons Learned (Sarah Milstein) — I really liked this honest appraisal of how Baratunde Thurston marketed his “How to be Black” book, and am doubly chuffed that it appeared on the O’Reilly Radar blog. I was fascinated by his Street Team, but knew I wanted to bring it to your attention when I read this. Start with your inner circle. I had an epiphany with Gary Vaynerchuk. I asked: “Did I ever ask you to buy my book?” He said, “Yeah, I bought it yesterday.” I talked about his book, but cash on the table — it didn’t happen. He wished he had identified everyone he knows, sending a personal note explaining: “A) buy the book; B) this means a lot to me. You owe me or I will owe you. Here’s some things you can do to help: If you have speaking opportunities, let me know. For instance, I would love to speak at schools.” Make it easy for people who want to help you. Everything else is bonus. If you haven’t already converted the inner circle, you’ve skipped a critical step. “Let the people who already love you show it” is the skill I feel like I’ve spent years working on, and still have years to go.

Profile of the Data Journalist: The Storyteller and The Teacher

Sarah Cohen and Anthony DeBarros teach and show how to use data in the service of storytelling.

To learn more about the people who are redefining the practice computer-assisted reporting, in some cases, building the newsroom stack for the 21st century, Radar conducted a series of email interviews with data journalists during the 2012 NICAR Conference. "News apps — when done right — can make large amounts of data easily understood and relevant to each person using them," said Anthony DeBarros.

Profile of the Data Journalist: The Hacks Hacker

Chrys Wu is helping other journalists learn how to practice data journalism at "Hacks and Hackers."

To learn more about the people who are redefining the practice computer-assisted reporting, in some cases, building the newsroom stack for the 21st century, Radar conducted a series of email interviews with data journalists during the 2012 NICAR Conference. "Data journalism and news apps create the lens that shows people the big picture they couldn't see but maybe had a hunch about otherwise," says Chrys Wu.

Profile of the Data Journalist: The Daily Visualizer

Matt Stiles oversees data journalism on NPR's State Impact project.

To learn more about the people who are redefining the practice computer-assisted reporting, in some cases, building the newsroom stack for the 21st century, Radar conducted a series of email interviews with data journalists during the 2012 NICAR Conference.

Profile of the Data Journalist: The Visualizer

Michelle Minkoff is adding context and clarity to data with interactive features at the Associated Press.

To learn more about the people who are redefining the practice computer-assisted reporting, in some cases, building the newsroom stack for the 21st century, Radar conducted a series of email interviews with data journalists during the 2012 NICAR Conference.

Global Adaptation Index enables better data-driven decisions

The Global Adaptation Index combines development indicators from 161 countries.

Speed, accessibility and open data have come together in the Global Adaptation Index, a new data browser that rates a given country's vulnerability to environmental shifts.