A nice UI for browsing a database of academic papers: Marian Dörk’s PivotPaths. It arranges papers matching a search term along with a sort of linked tag-cloud of authors and other keywords for easy navigation. All the interaction is really nice (try dragging a line between two authors to compare them!). Papers queried from Microsoft Academic Search. Find it interesting how looking at a different database for my standard search terms reveals unfamiliar sets of papers (my vanity queries turned up nothing in the viz, tho they do have hits in Microsoft Academic Search). Would be really cool if you could point it to google scholar also to compare coverage. I like that, even ‘tho it was built at Microsoft Research, it uses open web standards! (SVG, oog). Have we reached the point where the best way to publicize a new data service is to get someone to build a viz with it? Via infosthetics.
Category Archives: taxonomy, hierarchy, multi-lvel data
Many Brands of Bubbly Bottles and Cans
… but only a few owning companies. Another great study and diagram of brand ownership relations by Philip Howard.
…To visualize the extent of pseudovariety in this industry we developed a cluster diagram to represent the number of soft drink brands and varieties found in the refrigerator cases of 94 Michigan retailers, along with their ownership connections.
Although, according to the Soda vs. Pop map, since the study was in Michigan, maybe it should be labeled “Pop” not “soft drinks”? ;-)
Talk at TransparencyCamp 2010
The Sunlight Foundation recently brought all of its grantees together so that each organization could learn more about what the others were working on. Since they funded the work on the CorpWatch API, I got to attend. They also invited folks to stay over the weekend and attend the TransparencyCamp, a 2-day “un-conference” in DC for folks interested in getting the government to be more open an responsive with its data.
I gave a presentation on the work we did on the CorpWatch API, and why I think it would be a good idea to develop a common standard id system for company and organization names. The talk was streamed live, and archived as well. I sound a bit jet-lagged ;-)
The slides from the talk are here (pdf).
I really enjoyed the un-conference format: participants basically shout out what they want to present or discuss and convince folks to come to their sessions. Got to finally meet face to face with the people who have been doing all the amazing work to provide the data we use in so many projects. Had some great discussions about trying to build some kind of larger project to create a common id system that various organizations could link to so that companies can be correctly matched and aggregated across datasets. Learned a lot. Was especially interested in some of the work being done internationally, seemed at time more pragmatic, less obsessed with the latest shinny new tech toys.