Tasty Data Goodies

Interview with Hyveup

Last week, our product manager, Gerad, also known around here as the "data guy" sat down with Xavier from Hyveup.com for a video interview.  He was a little nervous, since it was his first time on TV (or Internet TV for that matter). But, we think he did an awesome job explaining what Swivel is all about in the world of Web 2.0. 

The video presents eye-catching screen shots of Swivel's best features (and Gerad's best features).  It's also complete with a funky soundtrack that made me want to get up and dance for data!

Hyveup called Swivel "the cornerstone for the information age."  Their article nailed a great description of our philosophy to integrate public and private data:

Combining public and private data is Swivel's Graal. While there is no doubt that Swivel crunches numbers like madness to figure out what their users want, the startup's approach is mostly to rely on the wisdom of the crowds to organize this potentially infinite source of data. In a way, Swivel enables businesses to balance out the internal and external forces in action by knowing the facts and adjusting to it: Swivel makes your business zen.

The zen of Swivel allows companies to meditate on the numbers, but it also creates space for intuitive decisions that only people can make. Gerad and Xavier discussed how great data analysis isn't just about the numbers. Gerad says:

When the video camera wasn't rolling, we had a great talk about how Swivel's real benefit was the context that people could bring to numbers. Xavier wondered if we were dogmatic about making only data-driven decisions, and I replied that numbers were just part of the story. However numbers often tell a part of the story that people aren't getting today.  At Swivel, we want everybody to get the numbers side of the story, because it's an interesting tale.

Hope you enjoy the video and be sure to check out Hyveup for the latest info on Web 2.0 start-ups!

Swivel in Financial Times

The data crew (Prof. Hans Rosling's Gapminder, IBM Many Eyes & Swivel) was mentioned in an article about the beauty of numbers in yesterday's Financial Times.  To read the full article you will need a subscription.  Professor Rosling has a powerful metaphor he shared with us when we met recently and Simon Briscoe of the Financial Times mentioned it in the article:

'Prof Rosling is a consummate performer but has a simple message. In the same way that "you don't have to pay to walk up a street", he says, information and understanding about our world should be free and widely accessible. "Statistics should be the intellectual sidewalks".'

Please check out the article.

Swivel in Nature

Declan Butler of the journal Nature, wrote an article about Swivel and IBM's Many Eyes in the March 1st, 2007 edition.  You can read it on page 10 of the print edition or online here.  From the article:

"I'm often frustrated by my inability to analyse in a different way data that are printed in peer-reviewed publications, when I'm interested in looking at a relationship that the authors didn't think of," [Brent Edwards, director of the Starkey Hearing Research Center in Berkeley, California] says. If research organizations and journals linked the raw data behind papers to social software tools such as Swivel and Many Eyes, he argues, "it would have considerable value to the scientific community as a whole".

UPDATE: as AlphaData pointed out in the comments to this post, there is a typo in the Nature article: there are more than a million data sets in the world that need to be set free and made more valuable, but we only have a few thousand of them currently at Swivel.  Stay tuned though, with the passion folks have for data, we might get to a million in our life times.

Swivel in Fast Company

Michael Prospero at Fast Company wrote an article about Swivel in the March 2007 issue.  He and the graphics team there did a cool job telling the story of how we got Swivel off the ground.  They fittingly use a bunch of data and graphs to tell the story.  You can read it on page 26 of the print magazine or if you are a subscriber you can read it online here as a pdf (you'll need to login first).

Swivel Interview with LunchMeet

Yesterday Dmitry and I had lunch with Irina Slutsky and Eddie Codel of LunchMeet.  We talked about freeing the world's data, turkey sandwiches and Swivel.  They posted the interview today, check it out here.  The camera adds about 15 or 20 pounds and we were nervous about our first ever video interview, but Eddie and Irina handled us well and we had a good session.  Thanks Eddie and Irina.

Swivel Mentioned in Wired

This morning we saw a post about Swivel at bookofjoe - 'World's most popular blogging anesthesiologist.'  That picture on the left is Joe. 

Joe said something about Swivel being in Wired magazine: 'Wired magazine wrote, "Upload Excel files or enter your own figures. From there, create a mashup of your own data with someone else's, pick a pretty chart style, and kiss Excel ugliness good-bye."'

Wow.  We're famous.  But we couldn't find the article at Wired.  We wrote Joe about it and he went beyond the call of blogger courtesy and hooked us up:

Dear Brian,

Because I like you, I've just gone out to my trash and dug out the magazine: Swivel's mentioned on page 60, as item #10 of 10 things featured in this month's "Playlist: What's Wired This Month," as follows:

10. Swivel.com

Imagine our delight at a Web site that not only lets you play with other people's data but also helps you make your own charts! (Yes, we're nerds: and that surprises you why?) Upload Excel files or enter your own figures. From there, create a mashup of your data with someone else's, pick a pretty chart style, and kiss Excel ugliness good-bye.

Turns out we're famous in print now.  Thanks, Joe, for digging through the trash!  Stop by bookofjoe, he's got a cool blog going.

UPDATE from joe: You're Live! http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/play.html