Blogs
Tags > visualization
Four short links: 16 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 15, 2009
Choose Your Own Adventure -- numerical and visual analysis of the Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The distinguishing characteristic of My Kind Of People is that they appreciate the quantitative study of the commonplace. (via Bryan O'Sullivan) Tracking Droid Numbers -- uLocate, the makers of the Where app for Android, have been tracking the growth of the Droid phone...
Four short links: 5 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 5, 2009
Heat Maps in R -- We used financial data here because it's easier to access than the airline data, but it's actually a pretty interesting way of looking at a financial time series. Weekend and holiday effects are a bit more obvious, and it's a bit like being able to see the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly closes all...
Four short links: 23 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 22, 2009
Information is Beautiful -- gorgeous descriptions of the design of infographics. For once, a design discussion that might be useful to mere mortals like me. Australian Teen Crafts "Sneaky" Games -- video interview with a 16 year-old winner of the IFTF, Sun, and BoingBoing Digital Open. Great to see game design, a topic we've followed on Radar, getting uptake...
Four short links: 19 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 19, 2009
YouTube's Bandwidth Bill is Zero (Wired) -- they buy dark fibre and peer with the major ISPs. Immaterials: The Ghost in the Text (Vimeo) -- visualising RFID fields. See also the blog post about the work by Timo Arnall from Touch and Jack Schulze from BERG. The Commercial Speech Arms Race (Bruce Schneier) -- Whenever you build a security...
Four short links: 1 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 1, 2009
The End of Objectivity, Web2.0 Version -- Our behaviour as journalists is now measurable. And measurability gives the lie to the pretence that journalists behave like scientists, impartially observing the petri dish of society. (via Pia Waugh) Screens in Context -- ideas for the video screens spring up in place of billboards. Whilst the advertising industry has one of...
Four short links: 25 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 25, 2009
Diesel: A Case Study In That Thing I Just Said -- a new asynchronous I/O library in Python, which earned this fabulous review from Glyph Lefkowitz who wrote the granddaddy of all asynch libraries in Python, Twisted. Again, I don't want to dump on Diesel here; for what it is, i.e. an experiment in how to idiomatically structure asynchronous...
Four short links: 17 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 16, 2009
Wikileaks Now Holds UK Postcode Database -- the UK does not have open geodata in the way that we know it. A state-owned enterprise, Ordnance Survey, is responsible for maintaining all sorts of baseline data and they charge (through the nose) for that data. This is the release of 1,841,177 post codes, geographic boundaries, and more. Postcodes in the...
Four short links: 16 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 16, 2009
Data Sharing: Empty Archives (Nature) -- asking and answering the question "why don't researchers share their data?" San Francisco Health Visual Dashboard -- Health Matters in San Francisco is a one-stop source of non-biased data and information about community health in the City, and healthy communities in general. It is intended to help planners, policy makers, and community members...
Four short links: 25 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 24, 2009
Tineye -- reverse search engine; you upload an image and they find you similar images so you know where else it's used. Check out their cool searches. PDF Pirate -- upload a PDF and this web site will give it back to you minus the restrictions on copying/printing/etc. Flare -- an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in...
Four short links: 7 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 6, 2009
Defragging the Stimulus -- each [recovery] site has its own silo of data, and no site is complete. What we need is a unified point of access to all sources of information: firsthand reports from Recovery.gov and state portals, commentary from StimulusWatch and MetaCarta, and more. Suggests that Recovery.gov should be the hub for this presently-decentralised pile of recovery...
Four short links: 3 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 3, 2009
Enabling Massively Parallel Mathematics Collaboration -- Jon Udell writes about Mike Adams whose WordPress plugin to grok LaTeX formatting of math has enabled a new scale of mathematics collaboration. 2845 Ways to Spin The Risk -- introduction to the ways in which our perception of risk (and numbers in general) can be distorted by how it is presented. (via...
Four short links: 27 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 27, 2009
Ignite OSCON -- 56m of video from Ignite OSCON. They're all great, but Dan Meyer remains the highlight for me. gheat -- a maptile server in Python, delivering heatmaps to be superimposed on Google Maps. Handy for visualization fiends. CaDNAno -- open source software for design of 3-dimensional DNA origami. One of George Church's projects. I love the combination...
IBM releases ILOG Elixir 2.5
By RJ OwenJuly 22, 2009
Yesterday IBM announced the release of ILOG Elixir 2.5 - the first Elixir release since ILOG was acquired by IBM back in January.
Four short links: 17 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 16, 2009
NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration in Excel -- Excel plugin for analysing graph data within Excel. Visualization and data wizardry come to the corporates who live in Excel. Managing the Environmental Crisis -- a comment by Edwin Winge: "Public involvement does offer long-range benefits, the most pragmatic of which is that it results in better decisions. Park Service...
Axiis - An Introduction and Tutorial
By Tom GonzalezJuly 3, 2009
This purpose of this article is to introduce developers and data visualization specialists to Axiis, which is an open source data visualization project based on Adobe Flex and Actionscript 3. While you do not have to be an expert in Flex Builder or ActionScript 3, having experience in both will make understanding this tutorial easier. Throughout the article I will assume you are comfortable with the fundamentals of building an application with Flex, and understand some of the primary language constructs embodied within ActionScript 3 and the Flex SDK, primarily MXML and Binding.
Four short links: 3 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 2, 2009
OECD Factbook -- Flash-built impressive data explorer from OECD. Go to Indicators > Load and, in the words of Ben Goldacre, "prepare for nerdgasm". (via bengoldacre on Twitter) James Boyle is on Twitter -- author of the book The Public Domain. Sewers and Startups (Pete Warden) -- designing to last, reminds me of Saul Griffith's heirloom design riff. When...
Four short links: 26 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 25, 2009
Size vs Growth vs Acceleration (Rowan Simpson) -- you can tell how well a company is doing by the basis on which they report their progress. Engineers Are The Best Deal, So Stock Up On Them (TechCrunch) -- Software engineers today are about 200-400% more productive than software engineers were 10 years ago because of open source software, better...
Four short links: 16 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 16, 2009
Dealing with Election Results Data -- taking the raw UK European election data into Google's Fusion Tables to try and make sense of it. More cloud-based tools for the data scientist within. (via Simon Willison) Time for an Open 311 API -- "311" is the US number to call for non-emergency municipal services. There have been a lot of...
Four short links: 10 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 9, 2009
Apple's Cool Matrix-Style App Wall (TechCrunch) -- a huge collection of icons for many of the apps available in the App Store, arranged by color. Apparently, when someone purchased one, that app’s icon would pulsate. An App Store version of Google's search globe. Information visualization makes activities meaningful, beautiful, and useful, but not necessarily all at the same time....
Four short links: 5 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 6, 2009
Visual Programming Environments for Kids -- detailed writeup of the research and coding done by Shone Sadler to build a visual programming environment for robots, so simple that kids can use it. (via steveweiss on Twitter) The Nation's CTO Lays Out His Priorities -- it's still not entirely clear how the CTO and CIO's roles differ, as both are...
Four short links: 28 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 28, 2009
Viral Epidemics Poised to go Mobile -- Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (author of Linked: How Everything Is Connected To Everything Else) modelled mobile phone virus epidemiology for NSF and concluded that (in accordance with experience) no single OS has critical mass for viruses to break-out. I wonder: will Android or iPhone reach that point first? (via ACM TechNews) Socrata -- formerly...
Four short links: 26 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 26, 2009
Flare -- dynamically partitioning and reconstructing key-value server. Currently built on Tokyo Cabinet, but backend is theoretically pluggable. (via joshua on delicious) Implantable Device Offers Continuous Cancer Monitoring -- the sensor network begins to extend into our bodies. The cylindrical, 5-millimeter implant contains magnetic nanoparticles coated with antibodies specific to the target molecules. Target molecules enter the implant through...
Four short links: 11 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 10, 2009
OSCAR Canada -- open source healthcare (EMR) software, akin to VistA. Se linuxmednews.com for more. Instaviz -- iPhone app for mindmapping/any other blob-and-line diagram. I'm hypnotised by the correction of a fuzzy hand-drawn circle into a clean crisp algorithmic circle. Buddypress -- open source software that turns a Wordpress installation into a social networking platform. Ok, so social networking...
Four short links: 8 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 8, 2009
Citizen Journalism and Civic Reporting -- Gawker rebuts the nonsense that reporters will be the only people at council meetings: as a newspaper reporter who spent a few years covering a town much like Baltimore — Oakland, California — I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and...
Visualizing the U.S. Senate Social Graph, 1991 - 2009 [Part 1]
By Andrew OdewahnMay 5, 2009
Arlen Specter's party switch was big news, but a quick visualization technique shows it was a long time coming. What other surprises might lurk in the Senate Social graph?
Four short links: 23 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 22, 2009
Multitouch, visualizations, body hacks, and ubicomp: Dell Demos Multitouch on the Studio One 19 (Engadget) -- the multitouch software on this baby is Fingertapps from the New Zealand company Unlimited Realities, whose founder was at Kiwi Foo Camp this year. Multitouch hits consumer PCs in a very mainstream way. Circos -- open source Perl library to produce beautiful circular data...
Four Short Links: 20 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 19, 2009
Camp, visualization, mistakes, and a wireless power meter hack: Toorcamp -- two day hacker camp in a Titan-1 missile silo. The coolest venue evar? I think so. The Allosphere (TED) -- JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the Allosphere, a planetarium-like sound-and-light visualization environment for scientific data. (via Lorrie Lejeune) The Mistake Bank -- The Mistake Bank is a place to share stories...
Four short links: 7 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 7, 2009
Maps, meaning, makers, and orphaned works: Lens Tools and Fisheye Map Browsing -- a summary of magnification in maps through history, culminating in use of the fisheye/lens as a way to explore layers and data in thematic maps. (via Titine's delicious stream) Socially Relevant Computing -- frustrated by the meaningless examples and work in computer science classes, Mike Buckley started...
Four short links: 1 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 1, 2009
No April Fools jokes because I'm a Grinch. Instead you get architecture, research, visualization, and pain: Stacks, Readers, Staff--Building the British Library is an overview of what a momentous accomplishment the British Library was. And a reminder that no matter how gorgeous, loved, and inevitable the final product seems, there's always a pitched battle to get it made. Architect Sir...
We Need to Teach Visual Critical Thinking
By Spencer CritchleyMarch 16, 2009
I was just looking at yet another vacuous presentation graphic, this one purporting to illustrate the SMART test for defining objectives. It looked something like this: This is of course rubbish. Infographics guru Edward Tufte would object strenuously to its...
Four short links: 12 Feb 2009
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 12, 2009
Two links on visualization and two on life: Myth of the Concentration Oasis -- Vaughan of Mind Hacks takes on the trendy notion that the Internet is turning us into brainless dullards who are unable to focus on any subject for longer than a 15s TV commercial. "The trouble is, it's plainly rubbish, and you just have to spend time...
Four short links: 2 Feb 2009
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 2, 2009
Songs off the Charts -- Johannes Kreidler's audio visualizations using Microsoft Songsmith. Reminds me of Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency where the amazing spreadsheet program could produce happy jingles or funereal dirges based on a company's revenues. (via Ben Fry) PWN! YouTube -- elegant URL hack: replace "www." with "pwn" in a YouTube movie URL and...
Four short links: 16 Jan 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 16, 2009
Toys, telegraphs, transparency, and travel in today's roundup of short interesting links. New Law Could Wipe Out Handcrafted Toy Makers - CNN story on a new consumer safety law that mandates expensive quality tests for components of toys, even those handmade in the US by micro-businesses. It's not clear what a solution looks like: mass-produced in China or micro-produced in...
Why Jerry Seinfeld Probably Cost Microsoft a Lot More than $10 Million
By Nitesh DhanjaniNovember 10, 2008
In this article, I want put forth a case study to demonstrate how capturing feelings on the social web can allow companies to measure the reputation of their brand.
Data Visualization With Processing
By Andrew TriceOctober 9, 2008
One of the most common themes that I write about on this blog is data visualization, especially with Flex and AIR. This time I decided to change things up a bit and am exploring data visualization with Processing.
To Render or Not to Render XBRL
By Diane MuellerSeptember 26, 2008
Publicly-traded companies spend enormous energies, resources, and dollars to get their financial reports out the door, only to see them pop up on the portal in simplified formats that don't tell the story accurately. So getting the 'canonical' rendering into the hands of the consuming stakeholders is an important aspect of financial report. In the Internet age, it's all about getting the 'eyeballs on the glass' approach - aka what our computer screens show us is what we believe, and enabling the applications we use to consume this content accurately is the key to successful business decisions. The XBRL technical community has addressed this issue in three approaches - presentation linkbases, iXBRL, and rendering linkbases.
Exploring The Google Earth API
By Andrew TriceAugust 22, 2008
Back in June, Google released the Google Earth API, which is a javascript-enabled browser plugin version of Google Earth. I finally got a chance to explore the Google Earth API, and here's the result.
Curl and the Java Processing Language
By Richard Monson-HaefelAugust 19, 2008
The Java processing language is a great for creating data visualizations and so is Curl. See the data visualizations written in the Java precessing language and compare them to similar programs written Curl.
The Batmobile, Lamborghini, and my Suburban
By Richard Monson-HaefelJuly 23, 2008
When you choose a RIA platform you have to consider many things and in many cases Ajax, Flash/Flex, or Silverlight will do the job nicely. But there are occasions when you need something much more powerful and that’s when you should take a serious look at Curl.
More Interesting Data Visualizations
By Andrew TriceJuly 22, 2008
Sorry, no code in this post. I decided to venture further from Flex development for a brief moment, and will focus on data and how it can be represented visually. My last post on data visualization sparked a desire to search the web to see what kinds of visualizations are out there.
Impressive Data Visualization
By Andrew TriceJuly 16, 2008
I was checking out the PaperVision3D blog today, and stumbled across a really impressive data visualization technique used by the band Radiohead with the release of their new video for "House of Cards". Why is this on insideria.com, you may wonder? Read on to see...
wordle with capitolwords
By Bryan RasmussenJune 24, 2008
Capitol Words' webservices can be used to find the words that were used most in the days when Congress was in session in the year, with the count, so for example you could find out that the word surveillance was used 40 times in 2006-12-04 (obviously the count is with common English words removed), so with this data we can generate a wordle of all the words that were used most in the Congressional session of a particular year.
Visualizing Geographic Data Sets
By Andrew TriceJune 20, 2008
Continuing on with my recent trend of posts related to data visualization and web based mapping, this time I've decided to have some fun and combine the two with the visualization of geographic data.
3D Charts Using PaperVision3D
By Andrew TriceJune 10, 2008
I haven't touched PaperVision3D in a while, and some of the recent articles here on insideria.com motivated me to dive in and take a look around. Here's what I came up with after sitting down with it for an evening...
Using Graphics Filters to Extend Basic Components
By Andrew TriceApril 24, 2008
I've discussed graphics filters previously, and here's a trick to use them to extend the capabilities of basic Flex controls. In this example, graphics filters will be used to alter the appearance of a basic tree control. I've run into this scenario numerous times... How can you change the appearance of tree folder icons to imply meaning to the branches of the tree?
Degrafa + Data Part 2: The Sparkline
By Andrew TriceApril 4, 2008
I've expanded upon the ideas of my last post: "Degrafa + Datagrids = Visual Display of Data", and I'm continuing to explore data visualizations using Degrafa. This time, I've decided to tackle the sparkline.
Degrafa + Datagrids = Visual Display of Data
By Andrew TriceMarch 27, 2008
If you are a Flex developer, and you haven't checked out Degrafa yet, you should. Degrafa is an open source declarative graphics framework for Flex. It allows you to easily create complex shapes, patterns, skins, gradients, strokes, etc... without intimate knowledge of the drawing API. The framework allows you to do some really cool things, without a lot of code. Here's a quick example of what can be done with a Flex datagrid, Degrafa, and some time to kill.
ScienceLogic: Using Flex for Complex Data Visualization
By Andrew TriceFebruary 22, 2008
One of the projects that I am actively involved with at Cynergy Sytems has recently gone gold, and into production. This is a brief case study how Adobe Flex was used to visualize complex data relationships for computer network topologies for ScienceLogic's EM7 Network Management appliance
Earth LIve new RIA Reviewed
By Rich TretolaFebruary 11, 2008
Last week I was fortunate enough to have been given a demo and walkthrough of a new Discovery Channel Rich Internet Application built by EffectiveUI. The demo was given by Randy Reiland, (senior vice president, Digital Media, Discovery Communications), Anthony Franco (president, EffectiveUI), and RJ Owen (senior designer, EffectiveUI).
Data Visualization iGoogle Gadgets
By Andre CharlandFebruary 7, 2008
I just saw the new Google Data Visualization Gadgets over on Infostehtics, apparently they have a whole bunch of other charts too. Sounds like they're pretty easy to use. I think this is definitely just the beginning of trend in easy to use, but rather specific, RIA mashup UIs.
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