Tasty Data Goodies

Radiohead takes data viz to MTV and Creative Commons

Radiohead has upped the ante once again with the release of their new music video, House of Cards.  In making the video, no cameras or lights were used – all the images you see were made from data. That's right, data.  The 3D images that make up the music video were rendered with Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR.  Google says the creators used 64 rotating lasers, shooting in a 360 degree radius, 900 times per minute to produce all of the landscape scenes.

And if that wasn't hip enough for the band, who offered their CD, In Rainbows, to fans with a name-your-own-price approach last year; they have also made all the data available to people like you and me through a Creative Commons license. Now, if you ask me, that's cool. 

You can download and manipulate the data to create your own version of Thom Yorke's pixilated face from Google Code. When you're done, you can share your version with the band and the rest of the world on the House of Cards YouTube Group.

Hacking Swivel Graphs

We have gotten a few emails recently from folks who want to put Swivel graphs into other Web sites, but feel our graphs are too large.  So, we thought we would highlight a few ways that people can change the formatting and size of our graphs.  Here are the steps:

1. Find a graph at Swivel you think is interesting, like this one:

available here: http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/25106665

2. You can gain more control of the graph by hacking the URL.  In the URL, replace the word 'show' with the word 'image' and then add a graph format, width and height along with '.png' to the end.  Graph formats can be one of sparkline, thumbnail, preview or default.

URL format:

http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/[id]/[format]/[width]/[height].png

Here are some examples:

Sparkline

A sparkline 20 pixels wide by 10 pixels high.

http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/25106665/sparkline/20/10.png

Thumbnail

A thumbnail 100 pixels wide by 50 pixels high.

http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/25106665/thumbnail/100/50.png

Preview

A preview 200 pixels wide by 100 pixels high.

http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/25106665/preview/200/100.png

Default

This is the default Swivel graph 600 pixels wide by 337 pixels high.

http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/25106665/default/600/337.png

If you have any questions send us an email at feedback@swivel.com or use the feedback form in the product.

You can also read our entry, How to blog a graph, for including a graph in your blog in the traditional way.

GraphWise: New Data Search Engine

A few weeks ago we received quite a few emails telling us to check out a new Web site for data called GraphWise.  GraphWise is tackling the very difficult problem of crawling the Web for tabular data and has created a compelling beta service.  We talked with the founders a few weeks ago to congratulate them on their launch and see how we might work together in our mission to make data more useful.   We hope to do some interesting stuff with them in the future.

From the GraphWise crew,

"The beta release of GraphWise.com is the Internet's first search engine for table data.  You can search for table data pulled from the web, graph the data with the row and column plots automatically created for you, customize the graphs, and optionally create glogs (graphical logs) that will include your comments about the graphs you've created.  The graphs and glogs you've created can be downloaded for use in your homework, business presentations or blogs or shared with the GraphWise community."

Check it out here.

DataDefractor can Swivel

Our friends over at DataDefractor know a thing or two about unfolding data from summarized, cross-tabbed Excel reports into a flat format suitable for analysis. It's also a format that works well with Swivel. We've recently released the Swivel Excel Toolbar that helps transform spreadsheets into a shape that Swivel understands; and while the Toolbar can handle some types of spreadsheets, there are many that are beyond its transformation capabilities. If you come across such data, you should check out the DataDefractor. It's an excellent interactive tool that guides you through unraveling the complexities of spreadsheets and turning them into nice and clean tables. According to the DataDefractor site, "DataDefractor™ is a visual data mapping and processing tool designed to automate the transformation of complex semi-structured Excel and CSV spreadsheets into structured queryable data marts delivered in a form suitable for loading into any data visualization application, data warehouse, OLAP cube or any Business Intelligence system."

And now, thanks to the initiative from Vassil Kovatchev and the DataDefractor team, the DataDefractor Solo Personal sports the Upload to Swivel button, so you can upload the transformed data directly into Swivel.

You can download DataDefractor Solo Personal from http://www.datadefractor.com/downloads/default.aspx

The best way to see the integration with Swivel is to follow these steps after installing DataDefractor Solo:

1. From the Start menu, select "Programs\Interactive Edge\DataDefractor Solo Personal\Samples\Freddie Mac" (this will launch DataDefractor Wizard pre-loaded with a sample financial spreadsheet and a DataDefractor mapping schema which dissects and normalizes the spreadsheet)
2. Click "Next" through the wizard until you reach the last page where the "Destination" is defined
3. Keep the default settings and click "Finish" - this will process the spreadsheet and convert it into a flat CSV file ready to be uploaded into Swivel
4. After the spreadsheet is processed, DataDefractor invokes a "Results" dialog box, which contains process statistics
5. Click button "Upload to swivel.com" to see the integration in action.

So, go ahead and take DataDefractor for a spin.

How to blog a graph

TypePad, a popular blogging engine, is featuring the Swivel blog on September 12th. Welcome TypePad bloggers!

Swivel's mission is to make data useful so people share insights, make great decisions and improve lives. We believe data is most valuable when it's out in the open where everyone can see it, debate it, have fun, and share new insights. Swivel makes it easy to accomplish all this with our simple-to-use blogging tools.

Bloggers interested in many different topics put graphs in their posts.  For example, the The Creative Commons, Water Crunch, HDPT of the Central African Republic and many others use Swivel and it's totally free!

Here's how you blog a graph from Swivel:

1. Upload, browse or search for data you want to blog about.

If you see data at a Web site you can copy & paste it into Swivel. If you have data in a spreadsheet you can upload it from your desktop. Or you can use the Swivel It button for Google Spreadsheets.

You can also click around on categories and toggle data based on official sources or community members.  Or search for a particular topic like Energy Consumption.

2. Customize a graph.

Once you find a graph you are interested in blogging, you can click the Blog It link on the lower right of the graph.

Here, you can choose colors, legends, and size.

3. Copy & paste the embed code:

and the result will look like this:

It's as easy as that! Then you can share your data insight with the world through your blog.

If you'd like to further customize your graph, you can use the bling function to add a picture to the background of your graph.

After you get the hang of blogging Swivel data, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of featured graphs from the Swivel home page or keep tabs on data categories that are interesting to you. Check out blog posts created by our other users under the Swivelicious Bloggers on our homepage. You can also show off your Swivel pride by including an i [Swivel] data badge on your blog.

Learn more about Swivel or simply browse through our site.

wednesday at where 2.0

should've blogged this yesterday, but an update from the where 2.0 conference on wednesday..  we won the launchpad vote on monday night so we got to do the demo again in front of double the audience, double the antics.  we ran out of time at the very end this time, so no robot dance.  hopefully the same message got across.

reconnected with the guys from up next (if you want an invitation password, then post a comment) and geocommons.  again, you should check out what they're doing with maps too.  andy and jesse were running around all hectic like being co-chair/staff and all so didn't get a chance to hang out with them at all.  also talked to a slew of people whose names i unfortunately barely remember, but hopefully i'll catch up with them post-conference anyway.

all in all, some cool stuff.  a lot of stuff around getting higher-resolution street-level type things, like google's street view and microsoft's 3d buildings.  lots of people were talking about esri.  i more enjoyed all of the start-up level stuff, but that's probably just personal preference.

Running the Numbers

I am prone to making arguments about how data affects our daily lives. No matter how hard I try, the point I am often trying to make remains abstract. Something only nerds and geeks like to talk about.

Well, no more. Seattle-based artist, Chris Jordan, has attempted to bring these numbers to life through powerful images. His new series, "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait," looks at our society through the "austere lens of statistics."

Each image portrays a specific quantity of something, such as fifteen million sheets of office paper - five minutes of paper use or 106,000 aluminum cans - thirty seconds of can consumption.

"My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs."  -- Chris Jordan

Please have a look at his work. We hope you find the images as powerful as we do.

Blue Pacific Knows Rich Charts

If you had to guess, where would you say a company called Blue Pacific Software is located? How about Lisbon, Portugal, on the balmy Atlantic shores? The other day I got an email from Manuel Fernandes about Blue Pacific's online flash chart tool, http://richchartlive.com, and I immediately went to check it out. Yeah, I'm a sucker for anything with a word 'graph' or 'chart' in it. The tool is very nifty, you can cut and paste a table of data or simply type it in, and have a ball with chart types and styles. You get a snippet of HTML that you can post on a blog, or you can open the chart in PowerPoint.

I'm looking west out of our San Francisco office window and I see a lead-gray layer of fog over the cold Pacific. The ocean is always bluer on the other side?