Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Maplight, a 501(c)(3) foundation, recently announced its “extensive mapping project examining the geographic origin of contributions to legislators by state; contributions from companies to legislators by state; and roll call votes by state and district on key bills in Congress.”
Today’s news peg points to “Who in Your State Has Contributed Money to Majority Leader Candidate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)?”
MapLight looks to be a good edition to our GIS toolbox.
Thanks to Margo Williams for passing this interview along. It’s filled with important tips and insights gained from Myers’ years of experience. Read the full interview with Myers at http://www.icij.org/blog/2014/06/try-and-find-narnia-wardrobe-inside-work-research-specialist
“Paul Myers is an internet research specialist working in the U.K. media. He joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. This followed an earlier career in computers and internet experience dating back to the 1970s.
“These days, his role sees him organise and deliver training courses related to internet investigation, digital security, social media research, data journalism, freedom of information and reporting statistics. His techniques have helped his colleagues develop creative approaches to research, conduct their investigations securely and have led many journalists to information they would never have otherwise been able to find. He has worked with leading British T.V. & radio news, current affairs, documentaries and consumer programmes.”
FlowingData passes along the link to this fine piece of work by Ben Fry. “Ben Fry Visualizes the Evolution of Darwin’s Ideas” Journos could be using a similar approach to analyze the evolution of the ideas of public officials.
“Ben Fry, well-known for Processing and plenty of other data goodness, announced his most recent piece, On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces, made possible by The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online.
The visualization explores the evolution of Charles Darwin's theory of, uh, evolution. It began as a less-defined 150,000-word text in the first edition and grew and developed to a 190,000-word theory in the sixth edition.
Watch where the updates in the text occur over time. Chunks are removed, chunks are added, and words are changed. Blocks are color-coded by edition. Roll over blocks to see the text underneath.
As usual, excellent work, Mr. Fry.”
Mary Ellen Bates offers up this good tip on “Google Squared” at Bates Information Services, www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html ________________________________________________________________________________________
Google Labs — the public playground where Google lets users try out new products or services that aren't yet ready for prime time — is my secret weapon for learning about cool new stuff. My favorite new discovery in Google Labs is Google Squared. It's a demonstration of a search engine trying to provide answers instead of just sites, and at a higher level than the simple “smart answers” you see when you search for “time in Rome” or “area code 909”. Rather, Google analyzes the retrieved pages, identifies common elements, and creates a table with the information it has compiled.
This is a fascinating tool that helps you compile facts into tables that Google builds on the fly. Hard to describe, easier to show. Go to Google.com/squared and type in a query that will retrieve a number of similar things — organic farms in Colorado, for example, or women CEOs… even superhero powers.
Google Squared generates a table of facts extracted from its index, with the items you are searching for as the left-most column, along with columns for whatever related characteristics are relevant for the topic. For organic farms in Colorado, for example, the table in the search results has columns for the name of the company, an image from the farm's web site, a snippet of description about the farm, and columns for telephone number, location and “season.” Note that some of these columns may have few entries in them, depending on what information Google analyzed. For women CEOs, the table includes the CEO's name, a photo, a snippet that indicates what her position is, her date of birth, and her nationality. For superhero powers, you will find the superhero's name, a photo, a far-too-brief description of said superhero, the hero's first appearance (in print, that is), publisher and even the hero's “abilities”.
Interestingly, you can insert your own items in a Google Squared table, and either let Google populate the rest of the row or type in whatever content you want in that row. I added Catwoman to my superheroes table and Google filled in the new row with her photo and description; I could provide the rest of the info. For some tables, Google even suggests additional columns. For my superheroes table, I could add columns for Aliases, Alter Ego, Profession (the Joker is a lawyer, of course), and so on. You can add your own columns, as well.
You can also delete a row or column that isn't relevant to your search. If you log in to your Google account, you can save your customized tables for later use. And you can export the table into Excel (the images are exported as URLs).
Google Squared is never going to compete with a real human's analysis of a collection of facts, but it can be a great way to start brainstorming, as a quick way to organize the results of your search, and as a starting point for a nicely-presented deliverable for your client.
“May I publish or reproduce this InfoTip?” Be my guest! Just make sure you credit the source, Bates Information Services, and include the URL, www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html
Colleague Owen Densmore points us to this page with these comments:
This use of gps may play a role in understanding economic development in any city by watching the flows within the city: http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2008/12/gps-city-tracks-1-year-in-24-hours-via.html This gets me to an aspect of ED I'm interested: MicroED. It comes from the observation that all cities' ED is unique. Think about every city you've lived in and you'll notice that each was unique. For me, Rochester NY: Kodak/Xerox company towns; Silicon Valley: A network of startups and established companies with a highly mobile social/skill network. Here in Santa Fe, we are similarly unique. I think this is core: discover your unique environment and capitalize on improving it through managing it. Data farming your city. Graph its flows. — Owen
This use of gps may play a role in understanding economic development in any city by watching the flows within the city: http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2008/12/gps-city-tracks-1-year-in-24-hours-via.html
This gets me to an aspect of ED I'm interested: MicroED. It comes from the observation that all cities' ED is unique. Think about every city you've lived in and you'll notice that each was unique. For me, Rochester NY: Kodak/Xerox company towns; Silicon Valley: A network of startups and established companies with a highly mobile social/skill network. Here in Santa Fe, we are similarly unique.
I think this is core: discover your unique environment and capitalize on improving it through managing it. Data farming your city. Graph its flows.
— Owen
GPS tracks can show the 'life' of a city, which parts of the city are working, areas that are no go zones and sections dedicated to shopping, work, entertainment etc. The possibilities for using GPS data to examine our cities 'health' are intriguing which turns us to the work by Fabian over at http://urbantick.blogspot.com/
The movie below illustrates Fabian's paths around the city of Plymouth over 365 days, compressed and visualised in Google Earth:
Google Earth is an excellent tool for displaying GPS data, especially over time, we are just starting to look into other options, perhaps After Effects – any thoughts or ideas for visualising GPS tracks over time would be great…
See http://urbantick.blogspot.com/ for more movies and examples on visualising GPS tracks in the city.
Amy Disch, library director of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, sends along these links via the News Librarians' listserv (newslib@listserv.unc.edu). This is a gentle reminder about how the foundations of good publications today rest, first, on the integration of library AND IT skills.
Watch them in the order listed:
Published by Don Begley at 10:09 pm under Complex News, event
It’s human nature: Elections and disinformation go hand-in-hand. We idealize the competition of ideas and the process of debate while we listen to the whisper campaigns telling us of the skeletons in the other candidate’s closet. Or, we can learn from serious journalism to tap into the growing number of digital tools at hand and see what is really going on in this fall’s campaigns. Join journalist Tom Johnson for a three-part workshop at Santa Fe Complex to learn how you can be your own investigative reporter and get ready for that special Tuesday in November.
Over the course of three Tuesdays, beginning September 30, Johnson will show workshop participants how to do the online research needed to understand what’s happening in the fall political campaign. There will be homework assignments and participants will contribute to the Three Tuesdays wiki so their discoveries will be available to the general public.
Everyone is welcome but space will be limited. A suggested donation of $45 covers all three events or $20 will help produce each session. Click here to sign up.
This workshop is NOT a sit-and-take-it-in event. We’re looking for folks who want to do some beginning hands-on (”On-line hands-on”, that is) investigation of New Mexico politics. And that means homework assignments and contributing to our Three Tuesdays wiki. Participants are also encouraged to bring a laptop if you can. Click here to sign up.
Tom Johnson’s 30-year career path in journalism is one that regularly moved from the classroom to the newsroom and back. He worked for TIME magazine in El Salvador in the mid-80s, was the founding editor of MacWEEK, and a deputy editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His areas of interest are analytic journalism, dynamic simulation models of publishing systems, complexity theory, the application of Geographic Information Systems in journalism and the impact of the digital revolution on journalism and journalism education. He is the founder and co-director of the Institute for Analytic Journalism and a member of the Advisory Board of Santa Fe Complex.
We have long been fans — and users — of the research tutorials created by the good folks in the UC Berkeley library. This item below from The Scout Report reminds me of that work and why I like it so much. You, too, might find it a helpful link for your training efforts.
UC Berkeley Library's Congressional Research Tutorials [Macromedia Flash Player] http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/wikis/congresearch/ Making a clear and direct path through the vast amount of Congressional materials can be quite a chore, even for the most seasoned and experienced researcher. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley Library has created these fine Congressional tutorials. Designed to help users locate materials both online and in the library, these tutorials are in the form of short Flash-enabled videos. Most of the tutorials last about two minutes, and they include “Find a Bill”, “How Do I Contact My Representative?”, “Find Congressional Debate”, and “Find a Hearing”. After viewing one (or more) of these tutorials, users can also make their way to the “What's going on in Congress right now?” area to stay on top of the various activities of this important legislative body. [KMG]
http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/wikis/congresearch/
Making a clear and direct path through the vast amount of Congressional materials can be quite a chore, even for the most seasoned and experienced researcher. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley Library has created these fine Congressional tutorials. Designed to help users locate materials both online and in the library, these tutorials are in the form of short Flash-enabled videos. Most of the tutorials last about two minutes, and they include “Find a Bill”, “How Do I Contact My Representative?”, “Find Congressional Debate”, and “Find a Hearing”. After viewing one (or more) of these tutorials, users can also make their way to the “What's going on in Congress right now?” area to stay on top of the various activities of this important legislative body. [KMG]
