- emscripten — LLVM to Javascript compiler. Any code that compiles to LLVM can run in the browser (Python, Lua, C++). LLVM is open source virtual machine that Apple bought into (literally, they hired the developer).
- 30 Lessons Learned in Computing Over The Last 10 Years — Backup every day at the minimum, and test restores every week. I don’t think I’ve worked at an organisation that didn’t discover at one point that they couldn’t restore from their backups. Many other words of wisdom, and this one rang particularly true: all code turns into shit given enough time and hands. (via Hacker News)
- What Your Computer Does While You Wait — top-to-bottom understanding of your system makes you a better programmer.
- How to Visualize the Competition — elegant graphing of strategy. (via Dave Moskovitz on Twitter)
ENTRIES TAGGED "visualizations"
Four short links: 27 December 2010
Compiling to Javascript, Lessons Learned, Idle Insights, and Visualizing Competition
Open data study shows progress, but a long road ahead for open government
The good news: Open data is viewed positively. The bad: There's lots of room for improvement.
A new report on the attitudes, quality and use of open government data shows strong support for the release of open data among citizens and government employees.
Strata Week: Shop 'til you drop
Stack Exchange goes in-house, Netflix pays for platforms, survey data gets visualized, and Infochimps acquires Data Marketplace
In this edition of Strata Week: Stack Exchange takes their hardware and software in-house; Neflix explains their adoption of AWS and open source; the New York Times maps out survey and census data; and Infochimps acquires Data Marketplace.
Four short links: 14 December 2010
Twitter Influence, Open Source Visualized, Arduino Autopilot, and Customer Respect
- The Million Follower Fallacy (PDF) — We found that indegree represents a user’s popularity, but is not related to other important notions of influence such as engaging audience, i.e., retweets and mentions. Retweets are driven by the content value of a tweet, while mentions are driven by the name value of the user. Such subtle differences lead to dissimilar groups of the top Twitter users; users who have high indegree do not necessarily spawn many retweets or mentions. This finding suggests that indegree alone reveals very little about the influence of a user. Research confirms what we all knew, that idiots who chase follower numbers have the influence they deserve. (via Steve O’Grady on Twitter, indirectly)
- Geocoding Github: Visualizing Distributed Open-Source Development — work for the Stanford visualization class, plotting open source commits on maps over time. See this page for the interactive explorer. (via Michael Driscoll on Twitter)
- ArduPilotMega 1.0 Launched — autopilot built on the Arduino platform. (via Chris Anderson on Twitter)
- Lessons of the Gawker Security Mess (Forbes blog) — nice deconstruction of what happened. In the chat, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan, after hearing that it is just Gawker users who have been compromised, remarks “oh, well. unimportant”. Gawker’s Richard Lawson wants to know if the breach is limited to “just the peasants?” Don’t trash talk about your users in company channels. The business that forgets it lives and dies on its customers is a business that will eventually be hated by its customers. (via Nahum Wild on Twitter)
Strata Gems: Make beautiful graphs of your Twitter network
Use Gephi and Python to find your personal communities
Using a bit of Python and the Gephi graph tool, exploring your own Twitter network is a great way to learn about analyzing networks: and the results definitely have a "wow" factor.
Strata Gems: Explore and visualize graphs with Gephi
Powerful open source graph manipulation
A Photoshop for data, Gephi is a powerful tool for exploring and presenting data as a graph. It's easy to get started with sample data sets, then import your own by generating files in a standard graph format.
Strata Gems: Five data blogs you should read
Data geekery, visualization and journalism
From deep-diving startup founders to national newspapers, there's a rich vein of wisdom and information in blogs about data. Here's five to get your reading list started.
Dipity taps data for infographics and revenue
Easy-to-use timelines catch on with consumers and publishers.
Dipity is making it easier for businesses, media outlets and individual users to create interactive timelines. In the following interview, Dipity co-founder and CEO Derek Dukes discusses the company's business model and the opportunities that come when rich datasets are matched with user-friendly interfaces.
Strata Gems: Quick starts for charts
Make your charts more informative and interesting
You know bar and pie charts can be ineffective, but where do you turn next? Here are some great starting points to make a start with more interesting and effective charts.
Strata Gems: Write your own visualizations
The Processing language is an easy way to get started with graphics
Visualization is a powerful way to turn data into a story. But if you're not a "graphics person", where do you start?
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