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The Quantified Self & Big Data: causing a new turn in science?

The Quantified Self & Big Data: causing a new turn in science?

How much time do you spend on Facebook? How many of your friends are living in Amsterdam? What is the best time to wake up in the morning? These questions are hard to answer and can take a lot...
What to do with all that big data?

What to do with all that big data?

“Big data will be bigger in 2013” according to the article on the website of Telegraph written on the 26th of December 2012. Even though ‘big data’ was ‘big’ in 2012, they predict that it will be bigger in...
Information visualization within Web 2.0: Google Flu Trends and Foursquare

Information visualization within Web 2.0: Google Flu Trends and Foursquare

Every day, users on the Web generate large amounts of data. At the same time it seems that the use of information visualization has increased with the rise of Web 2.0. The term information visualization is defined by Stuart...

Visualisation Aesthetics: Creative ways of visualising food and nutrition data

Communicating data can be a difficult task to embark on. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges would be to present / visualise data in a way that even viewers that are not informed or familiar with the subject visualised...
Big data, long data and… ephemeral data?

Big data, long data and… ephemeral data?

Currently the topic of data is mostly approached in terms of volume and temporal scope – a perspective translated in expressions such as “big data” and “long data”. Nevertheless, these terms are somehow abstract to most users and only...
Data Visualization Templates

Data Visualization Templates

Templates are ready-made project files that can be customized and used as the basis for various types of media content. In the world of graphic design, web design and motion graphic design, the use of templates is widely spread....
Cultural Bias in Data Visualization

Cultural Bias in Data Visualization

Data visualizations have to deal with the hard task of presenting data in such a way that the intention of the visualization becomes clear to the audience. Using literature dealing with the translation of data into design and the...
Data visualizations: a global matter

Data visualizations: a global matter

Two levels of information processing Our world is saturated with information. Images, objects, texts, numbers, audio, moving visuals, and everything in between. There’s a reason some call the present the Information Age and invent terms like informatization. All...
Show Me the Data 2012

Show Me the Data 2012

Show me the data is an annual conference about data visualizations, developed by multidisciplinary students of the master New Media and Computer Science at the UvA and Editorial Design at the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design...
Using map projections in data visualizations

Using map projections in data visualizations

In an era of internet users actively creating their own content, easily accessible tools are available for the public to create their own data visualizations. Applications like Many Eyes or Tableau Public give statistic enthusiasts the appropriate possibilities to...
Show, Give and Hack: A Call for Open Data

Show, Give and Hack: A Call for Open Data

I’ve got a confession to make. When I’m watching the news and the newscaster starts talking about the national and global economy, I find it hard to maintain interest. Of course, this is due to the fact that it...
Data Journalism in the Netherlands

Data Journalism in the Netherlands

Tuesday the 6th of December 2011. Trending topic on Twitter is #nederlandvanboven. Non-Dutch users are confused, what is this hashtag so many people are tweeting about? It is the television documentary Nederland van Boven (the Netherlands from above), inspired...

Seminar: CBS Data Visualization – Data Journalism

– Last Friday the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) held an interactive data visualization day “Datavisualisatie in beweging” initiated by web designer Eugene Tjoa and Bas Broekhuizen. With this seminar several data visualization professionals were invited, to present their work in...

Seminar: CBS Datavisualization – Bas Broekhuizen

Last Friday the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) held an interactive data visualization day “Datavisualisatie in beweging” initiated by web designer Eugene Tjoa and Bas Broekhuizen. With this seminar statistic data supplier CBS invited several data visualization professionals, to present their...

City Vibes Project – A heartbeat of the city based on its BPM

We choose our music to best fit our mood, our spirit or our activities. We use it to celebrate our victories, to soothe our pain or to give us energy when we are feeling down. This is why ensuring...
Interview with James Robinson: Mapping the World’s Signal

Interview with James Robinson: Mapping the World’s Signal

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blogpost about Open Signal Maps, an application for android that maps the world’s signal. I used the application myself for several days and it worked pretty fine and gave me better...

qwiki – can linear narratives still be relevant in hyperlinked contexts?

Some time has passed since the official launch of qwiki (see the Masters of Media Blog initial impressions). Although still in alpha, a more profound critique can be put forward as the platform evolved and opened itself to users.

Notes from Visualizing Europe: the power and potential of data visualization

Last week I attended Visualizing Europe, a one-day conference where a very interesting and diverse group of data visualization experts and designers talked about the power and potential of data visualization. Below are some notes and comments on some points...
Data visualizing the story of food and emotion

Data visualizing the story of food and emotion

How do we even begin to visualize and draw connections between the intimately complex relationship that exists between food and emotion? Can we discover patterns amongst global food trends and global emotional trends? Could data visualization help us weave...
How to make beautiful music (audibly & visually) without being a musician

How to make beautiful music (audibly & visually) without being a musician

Composing and representing music visually has traditionally been through music notation. Using a 5 lined “staff” or “stave” as a framework, black circles with lines are drawn to represent pitch and length of notes with other markings such as...
Show me the Data 2011

Show me the Data 2011

Show me the Data 2011 A presentations of six multidisciplinary data visualization projects developed by Master students of the University of Amsterdam (Media Studies and Computer Science)  and the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design.
Sciencemappr: Some dataset related implications

Sciencemappr: Some dataset related implications

In my previous blogpost I posed some questions concerning the visualization project I am currently working on. The purpose of the project is to visualize global scientific interest for human rights issues and the emergence and disappearance of scientific...

Getting data, sharing data and raising political awareness.

Using vision to amplify cognition. According to the Light Switch Theory, vision appeared on Earth around 543 million years ago and triggered the Cambrian explosion (evolution’s Big Bang). Before that none of the living entities could see and relied to...
Interactivity in the Online Graphics of The New York Times and The Guardian

Interactivity in the Online Graphics of The New York Times and The Guardian

Almost every story a journalist writes contains the five W’s: who, what, where, why, when. However, in the last two decades the journalistic profession and it’s employer were forced to make some new transformations. These changes have been caused...