xkcd: University Website

Posted on July 29, 2010 by mfagan

xkcd: University Website – I couldn’t have said it any better

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Google Acquires Metaweb To Make Search Smarter

Posted on July 16, 2010 by mfagan

Google Acquires Metaweb To Make Search Smarter – I’m almost getting sick of noting every time Google buys a company I really like.

This one worries me a bit, as a lot of their work involves open data, and I hope that isn’t impeded. Metaweb’s Freebase was essentially started as a response to Google Base being a closed system. I guess we’ll see.

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MapQuest Dev Blog – MapQuest Opens Up – in the UK

Posted on July 9, 2010 by mfagan

MapQuest Dev Blog – MapQuest Opens Up – in the UK – people’s eyes tend to gloss over when I explain that it won’t be that many years before most online maps and GPS devices use OpenStreetMap as their data source. And although use of OSM has been spreading, this is a very big deal… MapQuest is not only using OSM data on a demo site, but hiring people who have built parts of the open source map stack to improve their work and release it openly, AND contributing $1 million to the open mapping cause in the US. Good job AOL.

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Colours In Cultures

Posted on April 26, 2010 by mfagan

Colours In Cultures – there’s some neat data in here, although the graphic is quite poorly designed. Despite that, you can still pick out a few interesting points of what are semi-universal colour conventions:

  • red: heat, passion (and to a lesser extent, anger and success)
  • black: evil
  • white: truce, purity (both not completely universal)
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The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A ‘Big Tent’ Can Be Too Big « OkTrends

Posted on April 15, 2010 by mfagan

The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A ‘Big Tent’ Can Be Too Big « OkTrends – I’ve had this open for over two weeks with the intention of blogging. I think I remember what I wanted to say.

For one thing, this shows how the variety of people who vote Democrat is considerably broader than the variety who vote Republican, and I think if you look at their stats and understand some of the politics in the U.S., it’s clear that this is a source of a lot of the problems.

Beyond that I wanted to point to the OkTrends blog, which despite being the blog of a dating website is full of extremely well-done statistical work on a variety of subjects, not to mention incredibly well done information graphics, which is a real rarity. The only thing I wish they’d added to this post is a note that they are assuming an 18-year-old in their database now will behave like a 28-year-old in their database in 10 years. It may be a good approximation, and it’s the best they can be expected to do given their data, but it’s something to note

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Technical Ramblings » Blog Archive » MetaCarta Acquired by Nokia

Posted on April 9, 2010 by mfagan

Technical Ramblings » Blog Archive » MetaCarta Acquired by Nokia – I guess this means that Nokia isn’t so much interested in “dumbly” owning Navteq, but sees itself as a serious player in the new world of geo-everything.

I just hope that MetaCarta’s APIs continue to be available.

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Freebase Gridworks: A power tool for data scrubbers « Jon Udell

Posted on March 26, 2010 by mfagan

Freebase Gridworks: A power tool for data scrubbers « Jon Udell – I’ve been a fan of Freebase, it’s Parallax, and SIMILE, but I had no idea that they were all created by the same couple of people.

I just watched their two screencasts on the new Freebase Gridworks and I think I said wow-ed aloud three or four times while watching.

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What If Everybody in Canada Flushed At Once? | Pat’s Papers

Posted on March 9, 2010 by mfagan

What If Everybody in Canada Flushed At Once? | Pat’s Papers – pretty neat graph

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An Idea for the TTC

Posted on March 3, 2010 by mfagan

I’ve oft-critisized the TTC (well, its management) in private for practices such as not opening up their data (in GTFS). Toronto’s transit agency is now the main holdout in the area. Actually, only one of the agencies has made their data truly public, the others have given it exclusively to Google. Anyhow, here’s an idea that would help them redeem themselves.

I noticed a few months ago that in a very large number of TTC subway cars, the maps, of which there are typically several per car, were entirely missing. It was pointed out to me that these are stolen frequently. So, here’s the brilliant idea. Sell the TTC maps.

TTC should send out a press release to the local media (couple of radio stations, the free newspapers that everyone reads on the subway already, etc.) announcing that a limited run of 200 of the maps will be sold the following week from the ticket both at the Bloor/Yonge station, for $15. No further advertising is needed, not even a little poster at the ticket booth. The media loves TTC stories, and this one will certainly be reported. All 200 will be sold within the first few days, at which point the TTC can put out a second press release bragging about the incredible demand and that they ran out far faster than expected, and will consider expanding sales and perhaps making them available at other stations as well.

The TTC will make money off this (profit from sales, plus reduced theft costs; not much, but they need whatever they can get), gain regard, and all at almost no work at all. The maps should be printed as-is, no need to make a consumer version of them or package them in any way. The only con I can think of is that the maps are probably not quite able to fit through the tiny window in the ticket booths that is normally used to pass money and tickets/tokens back and forth; I’ll leave this minor problem up to the TTC to figure out.

For those interested, you can see the TTC map (and a user-created similar map) on ahk2chan, an interactive map on the TTC site, and a Chinese version.

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Quizify blog

Posted on March 1, 2010 by mfagan

I announced Quizify recently, but I won’t usually be writing much about it here. I’ve created a separate Quizify Blog for anyone interested.

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