Tasty Data Goodies

Apps for America: the data.gov challenge

Sunlight Labs is turning government data into usable information and they want your help! This year, they are hosting the Apps for America contest alongside Google, O'Reilly Media, and TechWeb.

Developers interested in data transparency can win up to $10,000 for creating an app that helps the public access and understand government data released by data.gov.

The deadline for apps 11:59:59pm Pacific Time on August 7th. Winners will be announced at the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in Washington, DC on September 8th.

What are you waiting for? Find out more about the contest and how to submit your app.

Not a developer? You can still check out all the apps and everyone will be able to cast their vote on the three finalists between August 24th and September 7th. (How democratic!)

Charting Health Care Reform

Everyone's talking about Obama's initiative for health care reform. As a result, data and charts are popping up in the news on the confidence in and cost of reforming health care. Here's a few tasty goodies:

On Healthcare, Americans Trust Physicians Over Politicians from Gallup: Seventy-three percent of Americans are confident that physicians will recommend the right way to reform the health care system. Those polled extended significantly less confidence to President Barack Obama and six other groups that will take part in the health care reform debate.

 

Obama Poll Sees Doubt on Budget and Health Care from the New York Times: A recent poll finds that a majority of Americans think that President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit. 34 percent disapprove of the way he's handling health care.

 

Congress: A Good Place for Health Care to Die from FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver takes a look at Clinton's approval ratings within the context of the Health Care Debate in 1993-4.

 

Rhetoric of Rationing Health Care Overlooks Reality and graphic from the New York Times: Article exploring the idea of rationing health care. Graphic shows that the United States spends more on health care than other countries, but our survival rates aren't always better.

 

How Health Care Stole Your Pay Raise from The Atlantic: Health care could be robbing you of your bonus at work. The Atlantic explains, "health care reform isn't just about reforming care. It's about reforming the economy. New bumper sticker: 'Reform Health Care; Get a Raise!'"

New Stuff: feature and download your numbers

We're releasing new features as fast as we can build them. In this week's deploy, don't miss these goodies:

Feature your faves
If there's a certain spreadsheet or chart that you don't want your group to miss, feature it!

Easier chart creation
Creating charts on Swivel just got more intuitive. Now, see chart errors and tips pop up right at the problem area. For a quick fix, click on the action link or just ignore it.

Dive into the data
When others are interested in seeing the numbers behind a chart, they can dive right in. We only show the numbers used to create the chart, so if there's confidential information on your source spreadsheet, it's stays confidential.

Download your numbers
Now it's just as easy to get your numbers out of Swivel as it is to get them in. Download charts and spreadsheets so you can have a taste of Swivel in your reports and presentations.

Swivel Product Update

Just a quick update about some exciting new features at Swivel.

New Feedback Mechanism

We're now using UserVoice to collect feedback.  UserVoice lets you vote on what features you'd like to see next for Swivel. Check it out now and leave us some feedback!

 

Search

We've added a search box in the upper right hand corner, so you can find your files more easily.

What's New on Swivel

Just a quick update about some new features at Swivel Business:

The future of public data on Swivel

Share Swivel Business charts with the entire world.  Anybody, even anonymous visitors, can see public data. (Reminder: we are merging Swivel and Swivel Business into one website.)

Interactive Embeds

Easily add a Swivel chart or spreadsheet to your website or blog. Our embeddable charts are interactive, so people can explore the numbers right from your site. Check it out:

 

New Navigation

We got rid of the inbox metaphor, gave groups home pages, and refined the way you browse. We think these changes make it much easier to get around Swivel Business.

Programmatic Chart Creation

Developers can use our new Chart API to programmatically create charts and keep them up to date.


Check out the latest features and tell us what you think. Your feedback is very important to us.

Exponential Times

At Swivel, we believe facts and figures drive decision-making and change. With that in mind, it's interesting to consider how far we've come in collecting, sharing, and actively using information.

This video helps convey the speed at which our world and technology is evolving in the information and globalization age. It's full of fun factoids and infographics that show how we live and thrive in these exponential times. For example, "it is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century."

How do you keep up in the information age?

(via Marketing Profs)

One Swivel

You may have noticed that we have two different websites right now: Swivel Preview for all your public data and Swivel Business for your private numbers.

Today, we have some important news for everyone who uses Swivel: we are merging Swivel and Swivel Business into one website.

The new Swivel will use the technology from Swivel Business, so it may feel a bit different than the website you're used to.  However, we will do our best to make sure the transition has minimal effects on your current data, charts, and comments.

We will keep you updated as we move along in this process. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them here or email us.

We encourage everyone to check out the new Swivel and tell us what you think. Your feedback is very important to us. (It's still a work in progress, so please excuse the rough edges.)

Request an invitation to the new Swivel.

Data Visualization in the Public Sector: Open Call for Evidence

The organization, Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI), is currently reviewing best practices and methods of data visualization for public sector decision-makers and researchers.

The project aims to understand the potential for visualizations to analyze and communicate data. They are currently looking for good examples of visualization that have: made an impact and helped communicate findings to decision makers; and helped researchers understand the story behind the data.

The project and its resulting website will be an excellent opportunity to showcase your own examples of good visualization, and help contribute to standards of best practice within the research community. If you have examples, OCSI wants to hear from you!

We would love to hear your stories too. When have data visualizations helped you with research or decision-making, in your personal life or in business? What kinds of visualizations work, or don't work? Post your comments below.

(Via infosthetics).

What's Your Eco-Footprint?

Happy Earth Day! With the eco-friendly spirit in the air, I decided to take the quiz over at Earth Day Networks to calculate my ecological footprint.

To calculate your personal toll on the Earth, the quiz takes you through things like what you eat, how much trash you have, where you live, and how you get around.

According to my results:

• If everyone lived like me, we'd need 3.5 planets to provide enough resources.
• To support my lifestyle, it takes 15.4 acres of the Earth's productive area.
• And here's the breakdown of my ecological footprint:

What's your ecological footprint? Take the quiz and post your answers here!

The World is a Twitter

This morning, San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, used Twitter to announce he will be officially running for Governor of California.

This is following on the heels of last week, which was host to a few buzz-worthy events for Twitter. The site may double its monthly traffic after the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN race to 1 million followers, and Oprah's showcase of the site on her show.

According to Compete, Twitter's pageviews rose from 367 million to more than 420 million for the week. The number of unique visitors rose to over 10 million. And TechCrunch found that over a million users users signed up for Twitter following Oprah's show.

With the site getting more popular, the possibilities for a real-time search engine are being fulfilled. In addition to Twitter Search, be sure to check out Twendz and TweetGrid.

PS. Follow Swivel on Twitter!