The Amazing Tableau Public
If you haven't come across Tableau Public yet I highly recommend you check it out. Tableau Public is a data visualisation service - with a twist. They also produce free desktop software which you can use to produce some amazing visualisations on the fly.
TUTORIAL: How to create an interactive map for your readers – for dummies like me
Geo-location, crowdsourcing, collaborative journalism... these are some of the buzz words of our business right now and it's quite an adventure getting your head into all of these trends and finding ways to apply them in every day journalism.
One of the most obviously useful applications is to create an interactive map where your readers can contribute information which has a geographic context. Say you wanted to map potholes in your community, or have a tool to report broken street lights and so on? This would be very useful.
Google Maps provides some powerful technology for online mapping and it's really easy to whip up a map illustrating a series of stories or an unfolding trend, but, unless you are a programmer, it can be a heck of a lot more difficult to create a map that your users can help build. The Google Map API is incredibly powerful but if, like me, you are not a programmer's bottom, you need to find other ways as a journalist to get things moving.
The giants of world newspapers in a groovy graphic
My spouse and muse, Gill Moodie, has this great piece on the world's largest newspapers over on her Grubstreet blog. And because she's my wife, I nicked it for myself too. Sorry! This graphic puts the 30000 daily newspaper I edit into some perspective!
"Who said newspaper's are dead? Look at this data visualisation of the world's top 100 newspapers which I knocked together and which tells another story. According to this newspapers are cooking like never before - in certain parts of the globe at least.
Fur for thought and my carbon footprint
Now, here's some food for thought. Or should that be fur for thought?
Check out this fascinating area chart by New Scientist which measures the carbon footprint of our favourite pets. Click on the image here to view their amazing findings