OECD will make its 2007 OECD Factbook available on Swivel
April 17, 2007
OECD and Swivel Invite Curious People to Explore, Discuss and Debate the OECD Factbook OECD profile page at Swivel Let the Feast Begin (Swivel Blog) -jajacobs
Google has acquired Gapminder's Trendalyzer software
April 1, 2007
A world in motion, The official Google Blog, March 16, 2007, by Marissa Mayer In this regard, we are excited to announce that we have acquired Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software, and we welcome the Trendalyzer team to Google. Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations. In its nimble hands, Trendalyzer views development data—such as regional income distribution or trends in global health—as literally a world of opportunity.
European Data Portal (CESSDA)
March 22, 2007
The Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) redesigned web site is now online at [http://]{.166431011-20032007}www.cessda.org. In addition to the new layout, the site has several new features including the CESSDA Data Portal which allows easy access to the catalogues of member organisations. Other pages provide a central news forum about CESSDA activities, links to official documents, contact details and other relevant information. The site’s content will continue to be developed and will include a members’ section.
More about "Many Eyes" data visualization
March 10, 2007
There is an interesting article by two of the creators of Many Eyes. IBM’s Many Eyes App After One Month by Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda B. Viégas Read/Write Web (March 05, 2007). While the initial examples they give of use of the site are, perhaps, not very social science data intensive, the implications for use of services like this (including Swivel and Data 360) may be profound. In the authors words, they wanted…
Myron Gutmann discusses Data-PASS at Library of Congress
February 20, 2007
Preserving At-Risk Digital Social Science Data: The Data-PASS Project This is a webcast of a presentation given on January 26, 2007 by Myron Gutmann at the Library of Congress on the Data-PASS (Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences) project . (Running Time: 60 minutes) Myron P. Gutmann, professor of history and director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan and the principal investigator of the Data-PASS partnership with the Library’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (www.
Another data-sharing, advanced visualization site
January 26, 2007
IBM has announced Many Eyes, a site for sharing and commenting on visualizations. As with swivel, users can upload any data set, but the tools for visualizing and graphing the data are much richer. The visualization options include US and World maps, line graphs, stack graphs, bar charts, block histograms, bubble diagrams, scatter plots, network diagrams, pie charts, and treemaps. The site isn’t yet live, but should be very shortly.
Data Video at Gapminder
January 21, 2007
At Gapminder there is a link to a video of Hans Rosling’s TED Talk Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. The video is definitely worth watching! It is interesting technically as a demonstration of data-visualization that is way beyond what we usually see. But it is also interesting because of the content of the data and how Rosling uses data visualization to “debunk a few myths about the ‘developing’ world.
More on Open Data
December 23, 2006
Bill Hooker has written a nice article about ensuring that the data behind published scientific literature are made openly available. Where are the data? Can I have them? What can I do with them? (17 Dec, 2006). He takes a practical approach based on the perspective of a researcher. His title says it all. …an Open Data addendum must at least answer my opening questions: it must point to the online, freely accessible location of the raw, un-hamburgered data; it should make clear that yes, you can have them; and it should state clearly what you can do with them.
RIN publishes report on researchers and discovery services
December 7, 2006
The UK Research Information Network “has published a report on the behaviour, perceptions and needs of researchers as users of discovery services.” Researchers and discovery services Behaviour, perceptions and needs (pdf) One interesting quote: The main uses of all the more general tools (such as Google, other forms of general web search and asking colleagues) are for more general background information activities. It is, however, worth noting that the general tools are also used to locate datasets whereas bibliographic tools are not.
An Opening for Open Data
November 2, 2006
The conference theme for IASSIST 2007, Building Global Knowledge Communities with Open Data, is very timely given new interest in defining and describing the open data concept. This week Peter Murray-Rust, who spearheads the SPARC-Opendata discussion list, posted a message announcing his entry for Open Data in the Wikipedia and inviting others to contribute to this entry. Robin Rice responded to Peter’s message with a copy of the IASSIST call for papers, which resulted in the following obervation from Peter: “Many of [the topics in the call for papers] have a close overlap with the topics at the Science Commons meeting and it is clear that Open Data is likely to become more widely used.