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Show Me the Data 2013

Show Me the Data 2013

Master students from UvA & maHKU proudly present seven multidisciplinary data visualization projects at SHOW ME THE DATA 2013 This year with three special guest speakers: John Verhoeven, Inspiring Data http://inspiring-data.com/ Arjan Scherpenisse, MiracleThings http://miraclethings.nl Jelle Kamsma, Datajournalist When: March...
What is data visualization’s goal? NGOs and real impact

What is data visualization’s goal? NGOs and real impact

The main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. (Friedman 2008) Friedman’s definition is simple and concise, yet broad and applicable to any type of visualization. What it fails to provide is what...
“Color is difficult”

“Color is difficult”

Color in information visualization is difficult because of the way our brains work, how we perceive color and cultural factors. But rather than discouraging to use color, this blogpost is for overcoming these difficulties and to deploy color intelligently.
Visual (for) thought: why data visualization should be used more in the classroom?

Visual (for) thought: why data visualization should be used more in the classroom?

“Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.”- David McCandless, TEDGlobal, 2010  Whatever data is, one thing is sure: we cannot overlook them. Since we live in the Big Data era,as Jaimy and Ana analyze in...
Mapping the Web

Mapping the Web

By zooming in and out, you navigate through the digital Pompeii of millions of abandoned homepages. While you pass the neighbourhood called ‘Pentagon’, you see military images and short stories about the army. By entering another district named ‘Vienna’,...
‘Bashing’s’ Datavisualization as Information Intervention

‘Bashing’s’ Datavisualization as Information Intervention

Living in the era of Big Data, data visualization is booming in science, marketing and journalism (( Segel, Edward, and Jeffrey Heer. “Narrative visualization: Telling stories with data.” Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions 16.6 (2010): 1139-1148. )). In...
Focusing on the future: Visualise the ‘tsunami of data’

Focusing on the future: Visualise the ‘tsunami of data’

If journalism is to die, at least it dies in a better shape. By help of interactive visualizations, journalists have new means to tell stories and build context around them. It is already a few years since data journalism...
Tracking a nations mood through Twitter: visualizing how you feel

Tracking a nations mood through Twitter: visualizing how you feel

There has been a shift from static to dynamic information visualization. Lately, information visualizations are being created by user generated input. Datasets can be created by scraping Twitter for certain keywords. The project “Pulse of the Nation” has visualized...

Piracy: A Desire, Promise, and Threat.

Today marks the tenth and final day of the Austin based multimedia festival South By Southwest. Running for more than 25 years, the festival is renowned for it’s huge number of performing artists, variety in content (from music, to...
Piracy in the Gaming Industry; Consumers at a Loss

Piracy in the Gaming Industry; Consumers at a Loss

  Piracy has been both a key aspect and influencer of the video gaming industry ever seen its conception. It has affected the way in which games are perceived, played, made, and the way in which they are sold....
Piracy was my shot at equality

Piracy was my shot at equality

Piracy is not theft, let’s make this perfectly clear. Theft, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English, is “the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it”. Piracy, on the other hand, is...
Is piracy democratising education?

Is piracy democratising education?

Piracy, be it of software, music or books, is rarely spoken of in a positive light (Liang 356). Governments and organisations around the world are scrambling to stop copyright infringement from eating into profits. My relationship with piracy started...
Leave the consumer out of it!

Leave the consumer out of it!

When watching the documentariesTPB AFK: The Pirate Bay, Away From Keyboard about a large lawsuit against The Pirate Bay and Google and the World Brain about Google’s plan to scan and publish every book ever made online in the...
P2P – Pirate to Pirate

P2P – Pirate to Pirate

You know that feeling when you’re in a candy store? Surrounded by mountains of chocolate, clouds of cotton candy and fountains of chocolate, the temptation becomes too much to bear. So what do you do? That’s right, when no...
TPB AFK: ´How society ought to look`

TPB AFK: ´How society ought to look`

When I think about piracy, I think about a pirate with a wild beard, a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder. Kind of like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, only perhaps less sexy. They do...

Pirates vs. Publishing Industries: a Stalemate

Scenario #1: Pirates are vicious freeloaders, the artists are their victims and the publishing industries have the artists’ best interests at heart. Scenario #2: the publishing industries are evil, capitalist scum who only care for money, the artists are...
African Film Industry Made Possible by: Piracy

African Film Industry Made Possible by: Piracy

Everybody I know downloads films and music illegally. The ‘Piracy is a crime’ campaign against movie piracy does not seem to work. March 31 HBO will broadcast the first episode of season three of Game of Thrones. I — with millions...
Book Industry: Time to Profile that Pirate (And then Seduce Him)

Book Industry: Time to Profile that Pirate (And then Seduce Him)

On February 15, 2012 library.nu was shut down since publishers accused the site of piracy. In his article The disappearing virtual library Christopher Kelty says that the website had offered ‘between 400,000 and a million digital books for free’,...
Piracy and Publishing in the Era of the Digital Age

Piracy and Publishing in the Era of the Digital Age

‘Internet pirates will always win. Hit one, countless others appear. Quickly.’ (The New York Times), ‘High Court backs internet piracy clampdown.’ (The Telegraph), ‘The US attempt to control internet piracy has sparked a fierce battle between the creative industries...
Google and its pirate ways

Google and its pirate ways

In October 2004, Google announced the world their idea of making books available for everyone on the planet, by simply search for them using their search function. Google Books (previously called Google print) wanted to make an attempt to...
Protect our Noble Pirates! On Pirating for the Greater Good.

Protect our Noble Pirates! On Pirating for the Greater Good.

What comes to mind when you think about piracy? Being but a simple new media-layman myself, my mind wanders off to the joy the free ‘file-sharing’ program Limewire († 2010) brought me in my teenage years and, more recently,...

Making Visible the Invisible: Information Visualization Through a Fine Art Lens

“Big Data will replace ideas, paradigms, organizations and ways of thinking about the world.” –Steve Lohr It is difficult to mention the present-day ubiquity of data without resorting to clichés. We are frequently reminded that data is in use...
Does Form Ever Follow Function?

Does Form Ever Follow Function?

I was lucky enough to attend to the Infographic Congress, in Zeist, on March 1st 2013. Dedicated to data visualization, this congress featured numerous speakers whom all presented data visualizations. Some of these graphic works were so old that...
Data | Visualization | Art?

Data | Visualization | Art?

When it comes to the aesthetic aspect of data visualizations, many times I feel like a nine year old girl (which is very strange) in a candy store who is blinded by all the pretty colors and shapes. Yes indeed,...