Online Applications

• Forecast: A weather site that’s easier to read

  March 27, 2013 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  When you go to one of the major sites to look up the weather, it's often hard to find what you're looking for. The sites feel dated, there isn't much hierarchy to the information, and navigation gets buried in the show-as-much-information-as-possible-on-the-same-page approach. Forecast, a site by the makers of the Dark Sky app, hopes to improve that experience during those times you need more than the high and lows for the day from the nearest widget.

  When you visit Forecast, you notice a difference right away. There's a map with local, regional, and global views, the temperature in large print on the right, and there are descriptions about what to expect that are easy to understand.

  From there, you get your daily forecasts below the map with details on demand. So you can get a lot of the same information that you get from larger sites, but you don't get hit with a bunch of data at once, and when you request more information, you get it quickly.

  There's also an API. Forecast and the Dark Sky app both run on it, which is the cherry on top of the goodness.

  I usually go to Matthew Ericson's minimalist weather page when I'm figuring out when to ride my bike or mow the lawn. Forecast might be my new weather destination for a while.

• Learn about politics in your state with Open States

  February 26, 2013 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  It's not especially straightforward to know or find out what's going on with your state's government. Sites aren't maintained, are unusable, or just don't provide much information. Open States, a project by the Sunlight Foundation, aims to change that.

  After more than four years of work from volunteers and a full-time team here at Sunlight we're immensely proud to launch the full Open States site with searchable legislative data for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Open States is the only comprehensive database of activities from all state capitols that makes it easy to find your state lawmaker, review their votes, search for legislation, track bills and much more.

  Just click on a state or enter an address, and you can quickly get information that's relevant to where you are. There's also iPhone and iPad apps if you prefer those, and all the data on the site is accessible via an API or a bulk data dump.
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• Analyze your Facebook profile with Wolfram|Alpha

  September 3, 2012 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  Feeding off the momentum from Stephen Wolfram's personal analytics earlier this year, Wolfram|Alpha launched Facebook Analytics, which spits out graphs about your profile and your friends. You can see your activity over time, weekly distributions, and some general information about how people like and comment your status updates.

  I've only updated my Facebook status a few times this year, so the profile-focused information is interesting to me, but the second half of the report provides high-level aggregates about your friends. For example, I'm apparently at a stage in life where most of my friends are either married or in a relationship. You can also see how your friends are connected via a network graph.

  So you get more detail than you do out of current infographic-generators. The hook though is the links within the report that lead to information about your birthday or where you were born, kind of like when you end up reading about sasquatch on Wikipedia when your original search was actually work-related.

• More infographic software

  May 25, 2012 to Online Applications by Kim Rees

  

  Recently there's been a spate of infographic tools popping up (e.g., easel.ly, venngage, and infogr.am). Okay, I'm not sure if 3 qualifies as a spate, but it sure seemed like a lot in a short period of time. I gave Infogr.am a whirl, and it appears to be the front runner in terms of capabilities. Unlike easel.ly, you can *actually input data* into your infographic! What a novel concept. Venngage was hit and miss in terms of it accepting the data I entered. Infogr.am also has a bug in that you can't have the number 0 in your data. Go figure.
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• Automated infographics with easel.ly

  May 13, 2012 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  I'm pretty sure I'm not in their target audience, but my main takeaway from this video is that now, with easel.ly, you don't need time, money, or skill to make quality infographics. And the prezi-like video seems fitting.

  Maybe I'm just stuck in my ways, but I'm having trouble getting on board with these tools. Easel.ly, for example, provides themes, such as the one on the right. There's a guy in the middle with graphs around him and pointers coming out of his body. You get to edit however you want.

  So in this case, you start with a complete visual and then work your way backwards to the data, which I'm not sure how you can edit other than manually changing the size of the graphs. (Working with the interface takes some patience at this stage in the application's life.) It's rare that good graphics are produced when you go this direction.

  Instead, start with the data (or information) first and then build around that — don't try to fit the data (or information) into a space it wasn't meant for.

  Or maybe there's a lot more in store that we can't see yet. Either way, right now, the application is rough at best.

• WolframAlpha Pro launches in an effort to democratize data science

  February 16, 2012 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  Taking the next step in the Wolfram|Alpha experiment, Wolfram launches a Pro version that lets you plug in your own data and get information out of it.

  The key idea is automation. The concept in Wolfram|Alpha Pro is that I should just be able to take my data in whatever raw form it arrives, and throw it into Wolfram|Alpha Pro. And then Wolfram|Alpha Pro should automatically do a whole bunch of analysis, and then give me a well-organized report about my data. And if my data isn't too large, this should all happen in a few seconds.

  I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but the sense I get from others is that the part about data not being too large is key. Apparently it's still in the early stages and can't handle much data at once. The main hook is automated summaries, model fitting, and some graphs, but if you know enough to interpret the models appropriately, shouldn't you know enough to derive them?

  I'd love to hear initial thoughts from those who have tried it. For those who haven't, it's $4.99 per month, but there's a two-week free trail.

  [Wolfram]

• BuzzData aims to make data more social

  August 23, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  In many ways, data wants to be social. It wants to get out there for people to see, interact with other datasets, and it wants people to talk about it. There aren't that many places for that to happen though. Newly launched BuzzData wants to fill that void. It's pitched as a "social network designed for data."
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• On the Launch of Visually

  August 4, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  A couple of weeks ago, Visually, a new infographics-based startup, launched with a warm reception among all the popular tech blogs. I didn't post about it right away for a couple of reasons. The first is that I've been sick for the past couple of weeks, and it's been hard to think in between all the nose-blowing. Seriously, this cold will not die. Secondly, I wasn't sure how I felt about the new site (partially due to the first reason). Now that I've let my thoughts simmer, it's clear that Visually has potential, but it's way too early to tell if it will actually work.
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• Visualizing Player makes it easier to share visualization

  July 19, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  It's easy to share static graphics. Save an image and then upload it to your own site. Boom, you're done. However, when it comes to interactive graphics, which come in a variety of file formats, it's not as straightforward. The Visualizing Player helps with this:

  We love and respect what you create and we know how much effort goes into each piece (it's why everything that gets uploaded to Visualizing is protected under a CC license). One of our core missions here at Visualizing is to build you the best possible platform and the most powerful tools for sharing those creations.

  Now when you go to Visualizing, there's an embed code accompanied with each graphic, and it's easy to share any visualization on your own blog or site. The embed works for 7 formats: HTML5, Java, Flash, PDF, Video, Image, and URL.
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• Make Sankey flow diagrams with Fineo, sort of

  July 6, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  Whenever I post a Sankey diagram (for example, here, here, and here), someone always asks how they can make their own. I'm always surprised that so many people have data where the chart type applies, but in any case, I've never had a good answer other than open up Illustrator and do it by hand. DensityDesign tries to make Sankey diagram creation easier with Fineo.
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• Dotspotting to make city data more legible

  June 27, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  Last year Stamen Design received a grant from the Knight News Challenge to design and implement Citytracking, a project to help people gather data about their cities and gain some kind of understanding about it. Dotspotting, the phase of the project, just launched. It makes it much easier to put dots on a map.
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• Gender and time comparisons on Twitter

  June 9, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  Men and women are different. You know that. But do they tweet differently? Tweetolife is a simple application that lets you compare and contrast what men and women tweet about. Simply type in a search term or phrase and compare. For example, search for love, and 63 percent of tweets that contain that word were from women, based on the sample data collected between November 2009 and February 2010.
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• GeoCommons 2.0, now with more mapping features

  June 6, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  GeoCommons, an open repository of data and maps, launched version 2.0 this week, which is more feature-rich and robust than the first. Two of the major updates have to do with the fast-changing data landscape: amount of data and browser technology.
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• DataWrangler for your data formatting needs

  May 26, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  Formatting data is a necessary pain, so anything that makes formatting easier is always welcome. Data Wrangler, from the Stanford Visualization Group, is the latest in the growing set of tools to get your data the way you need it (so that you can get to the fun part already). It's similar to Google Refine in that they're both browser-based, but my first impression is that Data Wrangler is more lightweight and it feels more responsive.
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• Google Correlate lets you see how your data relates to search queries

  May 25, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  A while back, Google showed how Influenza outbreaks correlated to searches for flu-related terms with Google Flu Trends. It helped researchers and policy-makers estimate flu activity much sooner than with previous methods. Google Correlate is the evolution of Flu Trends in that now you can correlate search trends with not just flu cases, but with your own data or other search queries.
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• WeatherSpark for more graphs about the weather than you will ever need

  March 14, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  You know Matthew Ericson's simple weather mashup? It shows only what you need to know for the day. WeatherSpark is the the opposite of that.
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• Google opens up Public Data Explorer to your data

  February 17, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  With Google's recent data-related offerings, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that they've opened up their Public Data Explorer so that you can upload your own data. Previously, it was only available when you searched for something like "GDP" and a related dataset was supplied by an official provider.

  [W]e’re opening the Public Data Explorer to your data. We’re making a new data format, the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL), openly available, and providing an interface for anyone to upload their datasets. DSPL is an XML-based format designed from the ground up to support rich, interactive visualizations like those in the Public Data Explorer. The DSPL language and upload interface are available in Google Labs.

  In terms of visualization, there's isn't anything new. You've got your maps, bar charts, and time series line charts, with the checkboxes on the left (like the snapshot below). Then there's the chart types available via the charting API.
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• Find more of the data you need with DataMarket

  January 31, 2011 to Data Sources, Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  Add another online destination to find the data that you need. DataMarket launched back in May with Icelandic data, but just a few days ago relaunched with data of the international variety. They tout 100 million time series datasets and 600 million facts. I'm not totally sure what that means (100 million lines, sets of lines?), but I take it that means a lot.

  Just over 2 years and countless cups of coffee after we started coding, DataMarket.com launches with international data. You can now find, visualize and download data from many of the world’s most important data providers on our site.

  At first glance DataMarket feels a lot like now defunct Swivel. Search for the data you want and you get back a list of datasets. The focus on only time series though is actually a plus in that they can provide more specific tools to visualize and explore. The current toolset isn't going to blow you away, but it's not bad.
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• This Tract provides a view of Census data on your block

  January 6, 2011 to Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  This Tract, by Michal Migurski of Stamen, with some help from Craig Mod, lets you view details of your block by way of Census data. It's still using 2000 data but was built in anticipation of the 2010 release, which should come in a couple of months. So we'll probably see some improvements from now until then.

  Enter your location or browse the slippy map for information on race, income, gender, education, age, and housing. There are also aggregates for your Census tract, county, state, and country.
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• Search how phrases have been used via Google Ngram Viewer

  December 20, 2010 to Data Sources, Online Applications by Nathan Yau

  

  Language changes. Culture changes. And we can see some of these changes via what authors write about in books over the years. Google's Book Ngram Viewer lets you search through this data, and shows a graph similar similar to the output of Google Trends. The above is the trends for nursery school, kindergarten, and child care:

  This shows trends in three ngrams from 1950 to 2000: "nursery school" (a 2-gram or bigram), "kindergarten" (a 1-gram or unigram), and "child care" (another bigram). What the y-axis shows is this: of all the bigrams contained in our sample of books written in English and published in the United States, what percentage of them are "nursery school" or "child care"? Of all the unigrams, what percentage of them are "kindergarten"? Here, you can see that use of the phrase "child care" started to rise in the late 1960s, overtaking "nursery school" around 1970 and then "kindergarten" around 1973. It peaked shortly after 1990 and has been falling steadily since.

  Find anything interesting?
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