By administrator | December 9, 2007
Jim sent me a message earlier today about a new data visualisation website that he had discovered: StatCrunch. When I took a look at this site, I encountered an appeal for people to upload and share their data, which struck a familiar chord. It seems that all of these web-based visualisation tools make a similar appeal. This certainly is true of Swivel, Data360 and Many Eyes.
Thinking back to an earlier era, statistical package vendors always included some data with their software. I remember Minitab shipping a variety of data files with its program. To some extent, data have been used to market products. However, now it seems that all these new visualization tools are getting into data repository services as part of their promotion strategy. I’m not a fan of this approach. Instead of each new tool site building its own data repository, I wish the vendors would promote the establishment and use of open data repositories. Encourage people to share their data with services that are foremost data services and not software services.
- Chuck Humphrey