Tag: Data
Ping and prod
David McCandless is justifiably famous for his work at Information is Beautiful but as his bio on the TED website says, his “genius is not so much in finding jazzy new ways to show data [...] but in finding fresh ways to combine datasets to let them ping and prod each other.”
With free tools such as Many Eyes and Tableau it’s becoming easier and easier to visualise data (though making it look beautiful is another matter).
The real challenge now is in finding and curating data to tell a new, compelling story.
The data and the journalist
How is the role of traditional journalism changing as more easy to use raw data sets become available for free online, allowing a greater range of users to data mine the content? 10,000 Words have a good introduction to some of the changes and implications.
Wolfram Alpha to offer API
Finding reliable data is often one of the hardest parts of large visualisation projects, so news that “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram Alpha are to open up their datasets through an API is a welcome development. Wolfram Alpha disappeared from the news as it became clear they’re not a rival to Google (in either’s current form at least) but offering an open API should bring a new range of mashups and visualisations by other developers tapping into the range of structured data available, such as astronomy, weather and finance.
When a news story is centred around a list, it’s hard to make your coverage stand out. That’s the problem we faced when Triple J ran their Hottest 100 of All Time earlier this year. Given everyone had the same list of one hundred songs, how do you add your own angle?
We all know that data can tell different stories depending on how you spin it and the way data is visually represented can lead to assumptions by the viewer.
data.gov encourages transparency
As part of their Open Government Initiative, the US government have launched data.gov, a website to provide access to datasets they produce. Combined with services like ManyEyes, this should be interesting to watch.