Data Visualization in the Developing World: How One Company is Helping Change the face of Online Maps

On September 22nd, I attended a meetup hosted by DC Media Makers featuring DevelopmentSeed – a firm specializing in open source data visualization and map development.  Over the course of the last several years, this company has created custom maps detailing election fraud and corruption in Afghanistan as well as the post-Earthquake aid work going on in Haiti by 47 different non-profits. They used data provided by various government agencies and NGOs in order to create zoom-able, customizable, and searchable maps that really told a story about events happening overseas.

Many times when web development companies create maps for their clients, the do so using flash. However, open source software has recently lent itself perfectly to creating customizable maps (a la google maps) on drupal frameworks. We love designing with Drupal here at the Bivings Group, and definitely understand and support the ability for data to be transferred into non-flash maps that tell stories and show information in unique and creative ways.

Below is the Afghanistan 2009 election fraud map.

The below is the HaitiAidMap data for the city of Port Au Prince – broken down by project.

The employees at DevelopmentSeed also created another open source product – MapBox – which is their contribution to enhance further collaboration and creation of maps to tell stories across the globe. In more technical terms MapBox is “a suite of open source tools and services for creating and using custom maps in the cloud.” According to Ian Cairns for DevelopmentSeed, this project will soon be looking for Beta Testers, so if maps and open source information development is interesting to you, feel free to click on the link above and sign up to test this software suite.

If you’re interested in other open source mapping and information gathering projects, check out http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC

The Gov2.0 Summit is going on right now in the Washington DC metropolitan area. We here at the Bivings Group were lucky enough to be able to attend the event and learn about the way new technology is impacting the future of Government.


Do you want in on the action?

Follow the SLURP140 we created just for the event at - http://www.slurp140.com/gov20summit/  On this page you'll be able to see the most active twitter users and learn along with the rest of the attendees about the effects that innovations and next generation technology will have on democracy. We're tracking hashtags such as  #g2s to bring you the most complete picture of the conferences and the topics covered during its panels.



Another way to stay on top of the conference proceedings is to watch the livestream of the summit at -http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010/public/content/livestream (warning: you may have to create an account on the gov2summit website in order to watch the video).   The site is streaming live presentations as well as taped panel discussions from the previous days.  Once the conference is over, you can still access the entire video archive on the website at www.gov2summit.com .



The following is a list of the day's topics after the jump:
Continue reading “Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC” »

Slurp up tweets about your event (for free)

Increasingly at conferences, Twitter is a growing communication and interaction channel between speakers and attendees.  Conferences that effectively make these tweets an integral part of their proceedings better engage all participants, but doing so requires the use tools and applications that require web development know-how to set up. Fortunately, we have a free and easy tool for event organizers to use – SLURP 140!

SLURP 140 helps event organizers harness tweets about their events; it is a successor to our Twitterslurp tool that was used at both the Personal Democracy Forum and Digital Capital Week.  It provides the following services:

• Aggregation of tweets following up to five search terms
• Constantly refreshed tweet stream of all related tweets 
• Displays a leader board of your top tweeters based on their number of tweets and mentions by others
• Graphs that plot the amount of tweets by hour and day
• Opportunity for branding Slurp 140 with your event's logos and sponsors
• Access to an archive of all captured tweets (Twitter's archive currently only goes back four days)
• Additional metrics to further gauge influence and reach coming soon

SLURP 140 is a great addition to an event webpage and can be projected on screens at the event to better connect and engage tweeting participants.

Interested in using SLURP 140?  Contact us today.

Live-Streaming API Will Transform Your Twitter Experience

Let the onslaught begin.

Today Twitter unleashed their new “live-streaming” API, which enables users a totally new way to enjoy the micro-blogging service sweeping the world. For users who access twitter through the multi-account capable, user-friendly app Tweetdeck, there is a new API option called “User Streams” that is now in “a limited testing period”. Keep in mind: there are an estimated 3,000 tweets sent per second.

All the features of Twitter you know and love will now be streamed in real-time, including the user timeline (your main account), direct messages, retweets, new followers, favorites and even additions to lists. By taking these updates into real-time, Twitter is continuing to reach it’s full potential as an information delivery service. Now without refreshing, reloading or any action at all on the part of the user, you can watch Twitter flow like the beautiful river of information that it truly is.

Users hungry for the action can either pay $20 for a registered version of Echofon for Mac, or sign up for one of Tweetdeck’s preview releases. Until you get your hands on this to see it for yourself, there’s this blistering fast preview video  that will give you an impression of how exactly Twitter will be the newest and truest incarnation of the “real-time web”.

PdF 2010: Notes from the Opening Events

Can the Internet Fix Politics?

That question is the theme of the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum, a two-day conference that merges technology with politics. Another theme that continued to be mentioned during the opening event of PdF was the ongoing disaster in the Gulf Coast, and the inability of the government and private industry to solve the crisis.

Micah Sifry noted during his welcome remarks that the real time viewing and public reaction of the oil spill is a metaphor for our times, where people can stare at the images and video, but are slow to take action. Sifry also posed the question: Will the websites, networks and tools being built facilitate long-term growth and solutions?

The event began with an impressive list of speakers, including Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, who spoke of his websites’ ability to offer not only access to data, but also facilitate dialog. He mentioned 9/11 and the Haiti earthquakes as examples of being able to provide people an outlet in a time when broadcast news offers wide coverage but little in the way of real information or details.Interestingly, while Wales sees the value in his own website and its transparency, he expressed concern in the value of having the home value of a neighbors’ home or the myriad of details found on sex offender websites. He remarked that in government, there are some things that need to be private simply so that business can be completed.

Next, the legendary Daniel Ellsberg spoke of how he would have released the Pentagon papers of 1971 in today’s times, mentioning the immediate value in scanning the documents and simply posting them online. The conversation then questioned whether that action would have had the same effect as it did during that time, when more attention was paid on the fact that the government learned that they could not stop the exchange of information.

Ellsberg was joined on Skype by Julian Assange from WikiLeaks , whose website publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct. Ellsberg spoke of the fact that his website “makes whistleblowers the heroes” and that courage it takes to expose wrongdoings encourages others to do the same, creating more transparency in government.

Video from PDF is streaming live at http://personaldemocracy.com/live .

You can also keep up with the latest Tweets. Check out the PdF Twitterslurp at http://personaldemocracy.com/twitter , powered by The Bivings Group.

Event hashtag is #pdf10.