News

• Science as metaphor

  May 4, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  In this article from Science from July 1998, award-winning journalist John Banville on the similarities and differences between art and science:

  Of course, art and science are fundamentally different in their methods, and in their ends. The doing of science involves a level of rigor unattainable to art. A scientific hypothesis can be proven—or, perhaps more importantly, disproven—but a poem, a picture, or a piece of music, cannot. Yet in their origins art and science are remarkably similar. It was a scientist, Niels Bohr, who declared that a great truth is a statement whose opposite is also a great truth. Oscar Wilde would have agreed.

  It often seems like there's a chasm between the two, but there is also plenty of common ground.

• Coming soon: Bloom visualizes your music collection as planets

  April 29, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  

  I almost never post about projects that aren't released yet, but the previews of Planetary from Bloom have got me excited. If you recall, we saw a taste of what Tom Carden and Ben Cerveny were up to last month in an interactive that displays your Twitter feed and one that maps Instagram photos.
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• Statistics is the sexiest subject around. And information design.

  April 7, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  Natasha Singer for The New York Times starts the article on visualization and design with: "In an uncharted world of boundless data, information designers are our new navigators." Uh oh, I thought, another aesthetic-heavy piece on hot numbers. But then Singer continues:

  They are computer scientists, statisticians, graphic designers, producers and cartographers who map entire oceans of data and turn them into innovative visual displays, like rich graphs and charts, that help both companies and consumers cut through the clutter. These gurus of visual analytics are making interactive data synonymous with attractive data.

  I can get on board with that. Includes soundbites from Rosling, Shneiderman, and Rodenbeck.

  [The New York Times]

• The end of the Statistical Abstract of the United States?

  March 24, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  There are rumblings, mostly among librarians, over the end of the Statistical Compendia branch of the Census Bureau, in 2012. The branch has produced the Statistical Abstract of the United States every year since 1878.
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• Best of digital news design winners announced

  March 15, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  The Society for News Design announced the winners of their annual digital competition. The New York Times, an obvious frontrunner, took home the Gold Award and Best in Show for their coverage of the Haiti Earthquake, as well as a bunch of other awards. USA Today and The Washington Post also earned some nods, but big congrats to the NYT graphics and multimedia desks.

• Freakonomics is available on Netflix to watch instantly

  February 23, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  FYI: Freakonomics, the Movie is available to watch instantly on Netflix right now. It is of course based on the highly recommended first book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I just watched it last night, and it's not as good as the book, but still an interesting watch. If anything, it's worth watching just to see Levitt talk about data. The exchange between Levitt and Dubner is also pretty entertaining.

  I haven't read the second book, SuperFreakonomics, yet. Thoughts?

• Data talks and keynotes from O’Reilly Strata conference

  February 9, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  The sold out O'Reilly Strata conference was a success down in Santa Clara, California, with the next one already scheduled for 2011 in New York. There were lots of interesting talks and lots of interesting people to talk to. I was only there for one day and didn't nearly get to meet everyone I wanted to, but it was great seeing so many people who are excited about data packed into one place.
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• Data conference: only a few days left for early registration + reader discount

  January 6, 2011 to News by Nathan Yau

  In case you haven't heard, O'Reilly's new Strata Conference on "making data work" is coming soon February 1-3 in Santa Clara, California. It's three days chock-full of data talks, tutorials, and events. And January 9 is the last day to get the early registration price.

  So if you're thinking about going, I'd register soon. You might as well save a couple hundred bucks. Plus if you register via FlowingData, you get 25% off (and support your favorite data site in the process), which is applied at checkout.

  There are a ton of speakers, including DJ Patil from LinkedIn, Philip Kromer from Infochimps, Hilary Mason from bit.ly, and Kim Rees from Periscopic (and technical editor for the upcoming FlowingData book). No doubt you will learn a lot and meet plenty of interesting people who are also into data.

• Jon Stewart explains Wikileaks’ Cablegate

  December 2, 2010 to Data Sources, News by Nathan Yau

  You've probably already heard and read about Wikileaks' Cablegate. If not, Andy Baio has a fine roundup with significant coverage and events to get you caught up quick. Alternatively, you can watch Jon Stewart and The Daily Show explain in the clip below (slightly NSFW, because it mentions a body part).
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• How do people use Firefox?

  November 30, 2010 to Data Sources, News by Nathan Yau

  Mozilla Labs just released a bunch of anonymized browsing data for their open data visualization competition:

  This competition is based on Mozilla's own open data program, Test Pilot. Test Pilot is a user research platform that collects structured user data through Firefox. All data is gathered through pre-defined Test Pilot studies, which aim to explore how people use their web browser and the Internet.

  There are two datasets in various formats. The first is browsing behavior from 27,000 users, including on/off private browsing that we saw a few months ago. The second dataset is from 160,000 users and is on how they actually use the Firefox interface.

  Additionally, both sets have survey answers to questions like "How long have you used Firefox?" which could make for some fun and interesting breakdowns.

  The deadline is December 17.

  [Mozilla Labs]

• Why Swivel shut down

  October 19, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  Robert Kosara asked former Swivel co-founders Brian Mulloy and Dmitry Dimov about their thoughts on why Swivel shut down recently. Only the blog remains. In case you're unfamiliar, Swivel was a service that let people upload data and share basic charts and graphs.

  Mulloy and Dimov left Swivel a while back and are currently working on different startups, so it was actually news to them too. But in the end it seems it came down to context for the data.
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• Tune in live to Data Visualization and Infographics meetup

  September 21, 2010 to News, Visualization by Nathan Yau

  The NY Data Visualization and Infographics meetup is about to start, and you can tune in to the livecast below. It's 4:20pm PST right now, so they'll probably be starting soon. They've got a good speaking lineup, so it should be interesting.
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• Federal CTO on government and data

  July 14, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  

  Tim O'Reilly and Aneesh Chopra, Federal Chief Technology Officer sit down for a chat on the US government's goals on open data and information accessibility. Disregard the infomercial feel to it. There's some interesting tidbits in there, albeit pretty broad.

  Uses for data

  Chopra brings up two examples on how the government is getting involved, and what's interesting about them is that it's not what most have in mind. It's not about money matters or policy-making.
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• Graph site Verifiable closes shop

  June 24, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  

  After a few years of fighting the good fight, charting and data site Verifiable closes shop in August. The idea spawned during an Edward Tufte workshop and developed into an effort to provide a tool that people could come to for facts by the numbers. Continue Reading

• Dabble DB acquired by Twitter

  June 18, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  

  Smallthought Systems, the group behind Dabble DB, the easy-to-use online database system and Trendly, the exploration tool built on top of Google Analytics data, was acquired by Twitter last week:

  Avi, Ben, Luke and I will be moving down to San Francisco this fall to work in Twitter's great downtown offices. We'll certainly miss everyone we're leaving behind, but at the same time we're excited about a new adventure. One great consequence of this is that the four of us will finally all live and work out of the same city — that has never happened before!

  On Smallthought's side of the table, they're joining a great company with a huge, unique, and exciting dataset i.e. billions of tweets. On Twitter's side of the table, they're getting a great team who knows data and how to help people make use of it. So it's great news all around.

• Maps and data score big grants from Knight News Challenge

  June 18, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  Since 2007, the Knight News Foundation has awarded millions of dollars in grants to fund "innovative ideas that develop platforms, tools and services to inform and transform community news, conversations and information distribution and visualization." There were 12 grants awarded this year, and three of them deal with maps. The folks at Stamen scored the biggest grant at $400k for their project CityTracking:

  To make municipal data easy to understand, CityTracking will allow users to create embeddable data visualizations that are appealing enough to spread virally and that are as easy to share as photos and videos. The dynamic interfaces will be appropriate to each data type, starting with crime and working through 311 calls for service, among others. The creators will use high design standards, making the visuals beautiful as well as useful.

  That's obviously something we'll need to keep an eye on.

  The other two mapping projects were GoMap Riga (Marcis Rubenis and Kristofs Blaus), which will place real-time local news on maps and Tilemapping (Development Seed), which will be a tool to help journalists make maps more easily.

  Broken record, yes I am, but data is gonna be big I tells ya. Big.

  See the quick ten-second pitches from all twelve winners below. I'm intrigued by The Cartoonist. They're going to use cartoon-like games to get engaged readers and get them involved in the news.
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• Live webcast: Community Health Data Initiative

  June 2, 2010 to Data Sources, News by Nathan Yau

  

  Health and Human Services (HHS) is about to announce the launch of their Community Health Data Initiative over in DC right now. The point is to make health data more usable for consumers and communities.

  Today groups will be presenting how they've made use of the data in the past few weeks from about 9:30 to 10:30 - as in right now. I've embedded the live webcast below.

  They're just going through the formalities of thank yous and intros right now, but the good stuff should start soon.
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• Design for America deadline approaching

  May 3, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  Just a quick note. Sunlight Labs' Design for America contest is coming up soon on May 15. There's $40k in prize money up for grabs, so get your entries in soon. All forms of media are accepted - including sculptures.
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• Viegas+Wattenberg announce visualization startup

  April 9, 2010 to News, Visualization by Nathan Yau

  Big news. Former IBMers Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg just announced their new venture Flowing Media (no relation to FlowingData), a consultancy focused on visualization for consumers and mass audiences.

  Those who read FD probably already know of the duo, but for those who don't, I'm sure you've seen some of their work. They sit somewhere in between the art/design and technical side of visualization, which always provides for interesting results. I highly recommend them if you're in need of some viz help. Needless to say, I'm a fan.

  Seeing a trend?

  This comes just a few months after Ben Fry's decision to also venture out on his own (after being with Seed for a year). Like Fernanda and Martin, he's also in Cambridge, interestingly enough. There must be something in the water over there.

  If anything, this is yet another indicator of the growing popularity of data, and more importantly, a desire to do something with it. I'm totally guessing here, but I bet Fernanda and Martin's inbox was chock-full of project possibilities/offers, which I'm sure played a big role in their decision.

  I don't know about you, but I'm excited about the opportunities out there after I graduate. It's a great time for data scientists.

• Design for America – Win $5,000

  March 29, 2010 to News by Nathan Yau

  In a follow up to Apps for America, Sunlight Labs just introduced their next contest: Design for America.

  This 10 week long design and data visualization extravaganza is focused on connecting the talents of art and design communities throughout the country to the wealth of government data now available through bulk data access and APIs, and to help nurture the field of information visualization. Our goal is simple and straightforward — to make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public.

  There are three subject areas to appeal to different types of designers too. There's data visualization, process transparency, and redesigning the government for a total of seven challenges each with a $5,000 top prize. Not bad, eh? Visit Sunlight Labs for more details.

  By the way, I'm one of the judges (along with Charles Blow, Andrew Vande Moere, Nicholas Felton, and others). You've got about two months to show me what you got. Go on, I dare ya.