Saturday, July 04, 2009
Jorn Barger, the NewsPage Network, and the Emergence of the Weblog Community | Tawawa.org
Jorn Barger, the NewsPage Network, and the Emergence of the Weblog Community | Tawawa.org: "Working from the online archival record, this paper aims to reconstruct the emergence at Jorn Barger’s initiative of the weblog community from a predecessor known as the NewsPage Network."
Friday, June 19, 2009
visualcomplexity.com | Force-Directed Edge Bundling for Graph Visualization
visualcomplexity.com | Force-Directed Edge Bundling for Graph Visualization: "| |
| Author(s): Danny Holten, Jarke J. van Wijk |
| Institution: Eindhoven University of Technology |
| Year: 2009 |
| URL: http://www.win.tue.nl/~dholten/papers/forcebundles_eurovis.pdf |
Graphs depicted as node-link diagrams are widely used to show relationships between entities. However, node-link diagrams comprised of a large number of nodes and edges often suffer from visual clutter. The use of edge bundling remedies this and reveals high-level edge patterns. Previous methods require the graph to contain a hierarchy for this, or they construct a control mesh to guide the edge bundling process, which often results in bundles that show considerable variation in curvature along the overall bundle direction. In a paper presented at Eurographics' Symposium on Visualization 2009, Danny Holten and Jarke J. van Wijk introduced a new edge bundling method that uses a self-organizing approach to bundling, in which edges are modeled as ?exible springs that can attract each other, has been introduced. In contrast to previous methods, no hierarchy or control mesh is used. The resulting bundled graphs show signi?cant clutter reduction and clearly visible high-level edge patterns. Curvature variation is furthermore minimized, resulting in smooth bundles that are easy to follow. The authors have also introduced a rendering technique that can be used to emphasize the bundling."
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit - Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web
JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit - Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web: "The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web."
Opera Unite
Opera Unite: "With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses the power of today's fast connections and hardware, allowing all of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com."
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing
EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing: "EtherPad is the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time.
When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more."
When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more."
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Data.gov
Data.gov: "Welcome to Data.gov
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead."
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead."
Axiis : Data Visualization Framework
Axiis : Data Visualization Framework: "Axiis is an open source data visualization framework designed for beginner and expert developers alike.Whether you are building elegant charts for executive briefings or exploring the boundaries of advanced data visualization research, Axiis has something for you.
Axiis provides both pre-built visualization components as well as abstract layout patterns and rendering classes that allow you to create your own unique visualizations.
Axiis is built upon the Degrafa graphics framework and Adobe Flex 3."
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Providing Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons on a Visual Display
Physical buttons have the unique ability to provide low-attention and vision-free interactions through their intuitive tactile clues. Unfortunately, the physicality of these interfaces makes them static, limiting the number and types of user interfaces they can support. On the other hand, touch screen technologies provide the ultimate interface flexibility, but offer no inherent tactile qualities. In this paper, we describe a technique that seeks to occupy the space between these two extremes – offering some of the flexibility of touch screens, while retaining the beneficial tactile properties of physical interfaces.
The outcome of our investigations is a visual display that contains deformable areas, able to produce physical buttons and other interface elements. These tactile features can be dynamically brought into and out of the interface, and otherwise manipulated under program control. The surfaces we describe provide the full dynamics of a visual display (through rear projection) as well as allowing for multitouch input (though an infrared lighting and camera setup behind the display). To illustrate the tactile capabilities of the surfaces, we describe a number of variations we uncovered in our exploration and prototyping. These go beyond simple on/off actuation and can be combined to provide a range of different possible tactile expressions. A preliminary user study indicates that our dynamic buttons perform much like physical buttons in tactile search tasks.
Just Landed: Processing, Twitter, MetaCarta & Hidden Data | blprnt.blg
Just Landed: Processing, Twitter, MetaCarta & Hidden Data | blprnt.blg: "I wondered if it would be possible to extract travel information from people’s public Twitter streams by searching for the term ‘Just landed in…’."
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Cyberspace Arriving: Using Computer Vision to Reconstruct and Connect Space
Cyberspace Arriving: Using Computer Vision to Reconstruct and Connect Space
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
Microsoft
Architect, MSN and Virtual Earth;
co-creator, Photosynth
Date: May 22nd, 2009
Time: 11am-Noon
Location: Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego
ABSTRACT:
For the past 15 years, computer graphics has been coming of age, moving from the lab to a commodity on the desktop, notebook, and now the mobile phone. Much of graphics can be described as the rendition of three-dimensional models as two-dimensional images. Its inverse problem, computer vision, concerns the reconstruction of three-dimensional environments from two-dimensional images, and -- like most inverseproblems -- is much harder. We are now in a transitional period, with vision techniques beginning to break out of the well-controlled environment of the lab, with its calibrated cameras and powerful workstations, and into the real world of cheap digital cameras and pocket-sized computers. With the combined capabilities of vision and graphics, we finally have the tools to realize the mirror world envisioned by authors who popularized the idea of 'cyberspace'. After surveying
computer vision techniques and seminal results, we'll review the algorithms underlying Photosynth, a tool allowing one to reconstruct 3D from digital photography, and chart its convergence with mapping and Virtual Earth.
SPEAKER BIO:
Blaise Aguera y Arcas is the Architect of MSN and Virtual Earth at Microsoft. He works in a variety of roles, from designer and coder to strategist. He joined the company when his startup company, Seadragon, was acquired by Microsoft's advanced R&D organization, Live Labs, in 2006. Shortly after the acquisition of Seadragon, Blaise directed his team in a collaboration with the University of Washington and Microsoft Research, leading to the first public previews of Photosynth several months later. The Photosynth software/service launched on August 20, 2008. Blaise's background is in applied math. He has worked in a variety of fields, including computational neuroscience and the computational analysis of early printing.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
Microsoft
Architect, MSN and Virtual Earth;
co-creator, Photosynth
Date: May 22nd, 2009
Time: 11am-Noon
Location: Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego
ABSTRACT:
For the past 15 years, computer graphics has been coming of age, moving from the lab to a commodity on the desktop, notebook, and now the mobile phone. Much of graphics can be described as the rendition of three-dimensional models as two-dimensional images. Its inverse problem, computer vision, concerns the reconstruction of three-dimensional environments from two-dimensional images, and -- like most inverseproblems -- is much harder. We are now in a transitional period, with vision techniques beginning to break out of the well-controlled environment of the lab, with its calibrated cameras and powerful workstations, and into the real world of cheap digital cameras and pocket-sized computers. With the combined capabilities of vision and graphics, we finally have the tools to realize the mirror world envisioned by authors who popularized the idea of 'cyberspace'. After surveying
computer vision techniques and seminal results, we'll review the algorithms underlying Photosynth, a tool allowing one to reconstruct 3D from digital photography, and chart its convergence with mapping and Virtual Earth.
SPEAKER BIO:
Blaise Aguera y Arcas is the Architect of MSN and Virtual Earth at Microsoft. He works in a variety of roles, from designer and coder to strategist. He joined the company when his startup company, Seadragon, was acquired by Microsoft's advanced R&D organization, Live Labs, in 2006. Shortly after the acquisition of Seadragon, Blaise directed his team in a collaboration with the University of Washington and Microsoft Research, leading to the first public previews of Photosynth several months later. The Photosynth software/service launched on August 20, 2008. Blaise's background is in applied math. He has worked in a variety of fields, including computational neuroscience and the computational analysis of early printing.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Mapping the World's Photos
Mapping the World's Photos
"We investigate how to organize a large collection of geotagged photos,
working with a dataset of about 35 million images collected
from Flickr. Our approach combines content analysis based on text
tags and image data with structural analysis based on geospatial
data. We use the spatial distribution of where people take photos
to define a relational structure between the photos that are taken at
popular places. We then study the interplay between this structure
and the content, using classification methods for predicting such
locations from visual, textual and temporal features of the photos.
We find that visual and temporal features improve the ability to
estimate the location of a photo, compared to using just textual features.
We illustrate using these techniques to organize a large photo
collection, while also revealing various interesting properties about
popular cities and landmarks at a global scale."
"We investigate how to organize a large collection of geotagged photos,
working with a dataset of about 35 million images collected
from Flickr. Our approach combines content analysis based on text
tags and image data with structural analysis based on geospatial
data. We use the spatial distribution of where people take photos
to define a relational structure between the photos that are taken at
popular places. We then study the interplay between this structure
and the content, using classification methods for predicting such
locations from visual, textual and temporal features of the photos.
We find that visual and temporal features improve the ability to
estimate the location of a photo, compared to using just textual features.
We illustrate using these techniques to organize a large photo
collection, while also revealing various interesting properties about
popular cities and landmarks at a global scale."
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Firediff - In Case of Stairs
Firediff - In Case of Stairs: "Firediff implements a change monitor that records all of the changes made by firebug and the application itself to CSS and the DOM. This provides insight into the functionality of the application as well as provide a record of the changes that were required to debug and tweak the page’s display."
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Data for Visualization
From Ben Fry's Writing
"OpenSecrets no longer secret
Word on the street (where by “the street” I mean an email from Golan Levin), is that the Center for Responsive Politics has made available piles and piles of data:
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org’s Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php:
CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP’s researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.
LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.
PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.
527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
The best thing here is that they’ve already tidied and scrubbed the data for you, just like Mom used to. The personal finance information alone has already led to startling revelations."
"OpenSecrets no longer secret
Word on the street (where by “the street” I mean an email from Golan Levin), is that the Center for Responsive Politics has made available piles and piles of data:
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org’s Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php:
CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP’s researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.
LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.
PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.
527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
The best thing here is that they’ve already tidied and scrubbed the data for you, just like Mom used to. The personal finance information alone has already led to startling revelations."
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Del.icio.us Finally Gets Some Respect from Yahoo - ReadWriteWeb
Del.icio.us Finally Gets Some Respect from Yahoo - ReadWriteWeb: "Yahoo bought popular social bookmarking service Delicous three and a half years ago and it's just now making moves to allow outsiders more access to the incredible data that's stored there. The company announced this morning that the Yahoo BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) platform can now pull in Delicious bookmarking history and top tags for any URL that's been bookmarked two or more times.Make no mistake about it, the vast majority of people on the web still have no idea that they can save their bookmarks outside their browsers. Yahoo has done a terrible job leveraging and growing this incredible database of user-categorized links of interest. Now the company is giving developers an opportunity to do so. Why is this important? Read on for some examples of what's now possible thanks to BOSS/Delicious integration.
Two calls for Delicious data are now supported inside BOSS: the number of times a URL has been bookmarked and the top tags that users have applied to categorize that URL. Delicious has its own API, but it's not as helpful as this integration with BOSS is."
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Famous Apple Commercial and a Focus Group
"Earlier this year I wrote a long, historical review, of the Apple 1984 spot and why I thought it was the best commercial ever produced for any Superbowl: (http://thenewadvertising.blogspot.com/2008/02/best-super-bowl-ad-ever-apple-1984.html). Recently, my business partner and Jugular creative director, Jeff Griffith, told me about this inspired piece of work that was used to open the 2007 Hatch Awards show, a Boston creative competition. The brilliant video is a send up of advertising testing, the bane of all creatives, where "consumers" sit in a room and opine about a storyboard rendering of the spot (which you see at the beginning of this video...hang in there through this section...it's worth it).
We ad types sit behind the glass and listen intently to what often are a range of inane and off the wall opinions. The problem, as you'll see here, is that the respondents (focus group lingo) rarely can make the kind of directional comments that can improve the work. For example: "confusing," "too symbolic," "literary allusions to George Orwell bore me" or "Nazi imagery has been overused." Instead they insist on rewriting the spot to "improve" it. Well...here the focus group trashes one of the best tv spots ever produced. And this is a REAL group. A perfect testament to how focus group testing can kill the best work...and how hard it is to "test" truly revolutionary, unique advertising." Thanks Amaya!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Degrafa : Declarative Graphics Framework
Degrafa : Declarative Graphics Framework: "Degrafa : Declarative Graphics Framework
The focus behind the Declarative Graphics Framework (Degrafa) is to bring the graphics classes up a level to provide a common ground between developer and designer within Flex, and enable the graphics classes to become first class citizens within the Flex framework.
There are many goals we want to achieve by developing Degrafa. One is eliminating the learning requirements for ActionScript in order to use the framework. There is a learning curve for a designer, or a programmer who is new to graphic development in ActionScript, which can cause a slow down in production levels.
By abstracting the graphics classes and bringing them closer to a dialect that most programmers or designers understand (MXML), regardless of background. This allows for a much easier transition.
In addition, we hope to combine high reuse and productivity (functions/algorithms/overrides) possibilities to allow both a designer and developer to interactively experiment and experience new avenues that couldn't otherwise be easily explored, understood or discovered.
Of course for adoption to be successful the abstraction needs to be readable. Although SVG is a tight format and grammar, it does not readily lend itself to readability. Thus a more verbose mark-up is required, which is why MXML is used for a more transparent transition.
MXML provides an excellent abstraction for both designers and developers. Easy to learn, easy to read, and most programming aspects that would otherwise confuse issues during cross communication are hidden. Binding is a natural expectation of MXML, so reuse of certain framework products can easily be had. There can be less code and more productivity.
Another important goal is that of optimization. Various tactics, including reuse wherever possible, use of overrides and binding are being integrated wherever possible. There are many opportunities to create something once and make small adjustments versus recreating a very similar object for every new instance.
Even with all the attention to creating an easier, more understandable method of creating graphics in Flex, there will be a need to integrate a supporting set of visual tools to rapidly create graphics. Our hopes are to develop these tools as Degrafa evolves as a framework.
With all these features we've assigned as goals, it is hard for us not to imagine all the possibilities of this framework. Whether for UI development, skinning, graphically dependant applications, rapid development or light weight widgets, Degrafa could be used in a variety of ways. Hopefully, we'll be able to make it everything we think it can be and more."
The focus behind the Declarative Graphics Framework (Degrafa) is to bring the graphics classes up a level to provide a common ground between developer and designer within Flex, and enable the graphics classes to become first class citizens within the Flex framework.
There are many goals we want to achieve by developing Degrafa. One is eliminating the learning requirements for ActionScript in order to use the framework. There is a learning curve for a designer, or a programmer who is new to graphic development in ActionScript, which can cause a slow down in production levels.
By abstracting the graphics classes and bringing them closer to a dialect that most programmers or designers understand (MXML), regardless of background. This allows for a much easier transition.
In addition, we hope to combine high reuse and productivity (functions/algorithms/overrides) possibilities to allow both a designer and developer to interactively experiment and experience new avenues that couldn't otherwise be easily explored, understood or discovered.
Of course for adoption to be successful the abstraction needs to be readable. Although SVG is a tight format and grammar, it does not readily lend itself to readability. Thus a more verbose mark-up is required, which is why MXML is used for a more transparent transition.
MXML provides an excellent abstraction for both designers and developers. Easy to learn, easy to read, and most programming aspects that would otherwise confuse issues during cross communication are hidden. Binding is a natural expectation of MXML, so reuse of certain framework products can easily be had. There can be less code and more productivity.
Another important goal is that of optimization. Various tactics, including reuse wherever possible, use of overrides and binding are being integrated wherever possible. There are many opportunities to create something once and make small adjustments versus recreating a very similar object for every new instance.
Even with all the attention to creating an easier, more understandable method of creating graphics in Flex, there will be a need to integrate a supporting set of visual tools to rapidly create graphics. Our hopes are to develop these tools as Degrafa evolves as a framework.
With all these features we've assigned as goals, it is hard for us not to imagine all the possibilities of this framework. Whether for UI development, skinning, graphically dependant applications, rapid development or light weight widgets, Degrafa could be used in a variety of ways. Hopefully, we'll be able to make it everything we think it can be and more."
GX - Full-Featured Javascript Animations Framework
GX - Full-Featured Javascript Animations Framework: "GX is a full-featured, cross-browser, super-tiny (10kb uncompressed) Javascript Animations Framework. Using GX you can create complex animations working with every w3c CSS property.
Currently, GX is designed in order to work with the jQuery Javascript Library and is being released under the MIT License.
Some of the GX's features:
* Support for animating every CSS property, including integers, colors, opacity and so on
* Support for Easing Equations (with GX.transitions.js)
* Support for multi-unit animations
* Support for relative animations
* Support for interacting with the animations (queue, cancel, pause and resume support)
* Support for using "special" values ("show", "hide", "toggle")
* Support for adding new, customized features
* 0% Browser sniffing, 100% pure Javascript
* Respects the Strict Standards and doesn't generate Javascript/CSS Warnings
* Completely Cross-Browser (IE 6+, Firefox 2+, Opera 9.25+, Safari 2+, Google Chrome)
"
Currently, GX is designed in order to work with the jQuery Javascript Library and is being released under the MIT License.
Some of the GX's features:
* Support for animating every CSS property, including integers, colors, opacity and so on
* Support for Easing Equations (with GX.transitions.js)
* Support for multi-unit animations
* Support for relative animations
* Support for interacting with the animations (queue, cancel, pause and resume support)
* Support for using "special" values ("show", "hide", "toggle")
* Support for adding new, customized features
* 0% Browser sniffing, 100% pure Javascript
* Respects the Strict Standards and doesn't generate Javascript/CSS Warnings
* Completely Cross-Browser (IE 6+, Firefox 2+, Opera 9.25+, Safari 2+, Google Chrome)
"
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Displays: Mitsubishi '3D Touchscreen' Knows How Far Away Your Finger Is, Prevents Sneaky Pokes
Displays: Mitsubishi '3D Touchscreen' Knows How Far Away Your Finger Is, Prevents Sneaky Pokes: "That someone has accomplished 3D motion tracking isn't the news here—it's that they've done it in single panel, without extra cameras or sensors and with a very high level of precision. How high? It measures your finger distance in steps of about .08mm, up to a distance of 20mm, and does so quickly enough that it can accurately guess its approach speed. Because of its short range, Mitsubishi says this tech will be most useful for mobile devices, which could add an extra method of interaction—hovering—to devices."
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