Alex Barnett blog : visualization

Geo-crime mashups

alexbarnett — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:36:00 GMT

I think I've hit a personal first: a depressing mashup. Oakland Crimestopping is a Flash-based vizualization tool overlaying reported crime data in Oakland, CA, by type (from aggrevated assault to murder to burglary) and time on a Virtual Earth map.

Fortunately, I live nowhere near Oakland, but if I did I think I'd try to live on a pontoon on Lake Merritt. This is what July 27 to August 24 2007 looks like:

To fuel an ongoing level of anxiety, you can subscribe to email alerts or to customized RSS feeds based on specific queries. Example - track all the fun and games going on within 1/2 mile of High St.

This post by the one of the site's developers, Michal Migurski, mentions future areas to cover might include San Francisco and Berkeley. Check out the juicy implementation details.

Two more crime maps tools you can get depressed about are Portland's CrimeMapper (e.g. a generated report on crimes on Richmond, Portland in the last 12 months) and LA Times' Homicide map (536 murders in 2007 and counting).

(via information aesthetics)

So what do we mean by the 'Internet Cloud'?

alexbarnett — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:49:00 GMT

Danny dropped by and asked me: "Hi Alex, do you happen to know of any half-decent definition of "the cloud"?"

I know it sounds corny, but 'good question'!!

So I'll give it a go.

Now, I could get textual, but I'll first try to answer with a few pics...

Maybe I see the 'cloud' as over-developed green jellyfish layer that's growing over the surface and orbit of Earth?

Hmmm, maybe not.

Or is it more like a cliché?

Maybe it's more like one giant thought-bubble in the sky?

Or a memecloud perhaps...

Or, and I do like this one, a cloud of APIs:

Enough pics.

Let's get textual now. Here are some that allude to the half-decent definition you're asking for:

"the Internet cloud, where massive facilities across the globe will store all the data you'll ever use" - George Gilder

Good, but limiting. The cloud is much more than 'just' all the data in the sky. Next...

"Like a cloud, the Net can't be pinned down - it's alive, unpredictable, and, as innumerable startups learn, can prove a funnel cloud or even a Bengali typhoon. When the Internet is depicted as cumulus humilis, it's dead wrong...It's much more altostratus - intense, rapid - and a failure to give it proper respect can result in disaster." - John Chambers

Yeah, kind of, but not particularly helpful in terms of understanding what is meant by 'cloud' (and, frankly, a little over-dramatic for my taste).

The next is more like it:

"Once your software becomes a service in the cloud, it opens up the potential to link it up with other services that are out there. For many vendors and users this is still a barely dawning realization, but it's of fundamental importance. In many ways, the Internet cloud is one great global SOA — still very rudimentary in many ways, but flexible enough to accommodate different levels of sophistication, and evolving fast." - Phil Whainewright

Descriptive, yes, and with the right keyword: services, but it's not really the definition I think you might be looking for.

So I'll have a go this time. Consider this a mesh-up (and I mean 'mesh') of the above definitions:

The Internet cloud, where the distributed and programmable network of services across the globe will serve all the data, resources and functionality we will ever use.

I grant, it's more of a prediction than a definition as I'm using the future tense ('will') rather than the present tense ('does'). But we're all going there. It's just a matter of when.

How's that?

If you don't like roller-coasters...

alexbarnett — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:18:00 GMT

If you don't like roller-coasters, do not check out this interpretation of US house pricing data (adjusted for inflation) since since 1890 to today.

Via information aesthetics.

Visualizing blog-mediated relationships

alexbarnett — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 03:08:00 GMT

Lilia Efimova has documented the development of her relationship with another blogger, Andrea, in the form of this visualization. It marks the types of communications between each other (blog posts, comments, del.icio.us bookmarks, Skype chats, etc), their timing and direction.

I love this diagram - it reminds me of some of relationships and friendships I've built up over the years that have followed a similar pattern:

Starts with a blog post I've read and either bookmarked, blogged about or commented on
If I find other blog posts of interest by the same author, I'll subscribe to their feed, like I did with Lillia a few months ago (I wonder if either Lilia or Andrea subscribe to each others' feeds...and if so, shouldn't these events be marked in the visualizaiton too?)
Blog posts pointing to each other ensue, comments too
Then the first email or IM, then Skype chats (in my case some recorded as podcasts), del.icio.us bookmarking (believe it or not relationships exisit via these...) and Flickering
And then, you never know, a real world meeting! (involving beer or two, usually)