Geotagging Photographs

Crandall et al (2009) investigate how to trace photographic images collected through Flickr, with combination of text tags, images with geospatial data, and estimating locations based on geographical features. 

Elizabeth Currid and Sarah Williams analysed thousands of Getty Images photographs, beginning in March 2006, to "to quantify and understand, visually and spatially, how this creative cultural scene really worked” (Currid, in Ryzik, 2009).

"We're going to see more research that’s using these types of finer-grained data sets, what I call data shadows, the traces that we leave behind as we go through the city," she [Williams] said. "They’re going to be important in uncovering what makes cities so dynamic." (Ryzik, 2009)

Mapping the World's Photos [PDF]
The Geography of Buzz: Art, Culture and the Social Milieu in Los Angeles and New York [PDF]

Crandall, D., Backstrom, L., Huttenlocher, D. & Kleinberg, J. (2009) 
Mapping the World’s Photos. [Online] http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~crandall/papers/mapping09www.pdf [09/07/2010]

Currid, E. & Williams, S. [2010] The Geography of Buzz: Art, Culture and the Social Milieu in Los Angeles and New York. [Online]

http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/CurridWilliamsGeogBuzz.pdf [09/07/2010]

Ryzik, M. (2009) Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool Is That? [Online] 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/arts/design/07buzz.html?_r=1 [09/07/2010]

Spatial Informanation Design Lab

http://www.spatialinformationdesignlab.org/index.php [09/07/2010]

iPhone Berlin Wall

Marc Gardeya, "possibly the only person in the world whose life has been more affected by the resurrection of the Berlin Wall than its fall", created an augmented reality program that recreated the Berlin Wall. "The software uses images and GPS satellite data in order to determine a person's location and to provide information or render images of the portions of the Berlin Wall that used to stand at that location" (Spiegel Online, 2010), combining the real and the virtual.

Spiegel Online (2010) When Science Fiction Becomes Reality: Rebuilding the Berlin Wall with Augmented Reality. [Online] http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,704970,00.html [09/07/2010]

Gordon Caldwell at Brandenburg Gate

Caldwell, G. (2010) Berlin Wall and Brandenberg Gate - Looking Into the Past. [Online]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordoncalder/4438754925/in/set-72157621151320684/ [09/07/2010]

New York Times Interviews

Gabriel Dance, Catrin Einhorn, Andrew Kueneman and Aron Pilhofer created a page to project over 200 interviews conducted in 14 states by the New York Times, where participants spoke of their greatest hopes for the president Barack Obama, "outside supermarkets, at parks, in restaurants". The responses are grouped in to 29 "hopes" speech bubbles, and sections can be heard by clicking on each speech bubble. The viewer/listener can agree to each comment by clicking on "I Hope So Too" (The New York Times, 2009).

Another project by the Times collected New Yorkers' "passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions" throughout 2009 [The New York Times, 2010].

The New York Times (2009) I Hope So Too. [Online]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/15/us/politics/20090115_HOPE.html [08/07/2010]

The New York Times [2010] 1 in 8 Million. [Online]

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html# [09/07/2010]

Immigration in New York Times

2 interactive pages by the New York Times on immigration. Matthew Bloch and Robert Gebeloff highlight the immigration population and percentage in each American county in Immigration Explorer, using data from Social Explorer, Minnesota Population Center and U.S. Census Bureau (Bloch & Gebeloff, 2009).

Number of Residents

In Immigration Conversations, Tom Jackson, Andrei Scheinkman and David G. Allan encourage viewers to "share your thoughts and reply to others'" on the immigration law passed in Arizona in April [Jackson, et al, 2010]. Boxes of each topics reflect the number of comments posted over the previous 24 hours, and the participants can sample recent comments by hovering over the silhouettes.

We need a cold war style barrier with minefields

Bloch, M. & Gebeloff, R. (2009) Immigration Explorer. [Online]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html [08/07/2010]
Jackson, T., Scheinkman, A. & Allan, D.G. [2010] Immigration Conversations. [Online] 
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/30/us/immigration-conversations.html [08/07/2010]

Faces from the War

Died 2010-05-16; Wood, Zarian

On the New York Times' website, Gabriel Dance, Aron Pilhofer, Andy Lehren and Jeff Damens created an interactive mosaic made of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq [Dance, et al, 2010]. Pixel-like squares which form the portrait also represent individuals of the list, and their information can be viewed by clicking on the squares. Searches under Afghanistan or Iraq, surnames, home states and towns are also possible.

571 results for "california"

Dance, G., Pilhofer, A., Lehren, A. & Damens, J. [2010] Faces of the Dead. [Online]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/faces-of-the-dead.html [08/07/2010]

All the Presidents' Words

1961: John F. Kennedy

In this New York Times' chart, U.S. president's inaugural speech is broken up in to words they used. Most frequently used words appear larger in size, with words that were used significantly more than average are highlighted in yellow, which can also be traced back to the original context of the speech (The New York Times, 2009). The images below are from are from George W. Bush's 2005 speech.

freedom America liberty nation

freedom freedom freedom Freedom freedom in context

In another New York Times interactive chart, Jonathan Corum and Farhana Hossain visualise the amount of U.S. presidential candidates' names used by their opponents, leading up to the Iowa caucuses, with lines connecting the speaker and the named (Corum & Hossain, 2007).

A Political Circle

Corum, C. & Hossain, F. (2007) Naming Names. [Online] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/12/15/us/politics/DEBATE.html [08/07/2010]
The New York Times (2009) Inaugural Words: 1789 to the Present. [Online]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/washington/20090117_ADDRESSES.html [08/07/2010]

Superbowl Tweets

Tweets during the 2009 Superbowl between Steelers and Cardinals is dotted on a map created by Matthew Bloch and Shan Carter. It can be played as a movie to highlight changes while the teams battled on the field, as well as picking out emoticons and adverts [Bloch & Carter, 2010]

Talking about Ads

Emoticons :)

Bloch, M. & Carter, S. [2010] Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl. [Online]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/sports/20090202_superbowl_twitter.html?ref=sports [08/07/2010]

Battista, J. (2009) Steelers 27, Cardinals 23: Last-Minute Drive Pushes Steelers to Sixth Title. [Online]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/sports/football/02super.html [08/07/2010]

Spatialkey.com

A data visualisation program:
http://www.spatialkey.com/

Night on Earth

Border cities like Ciudad Juaréz, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, illustrate different city patterns side-by-side, suggesting cultural influences on the development and growth of cities and infrastructure. Ciudad Juaréz, supports at least 1,300,000 people. On the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, El Paso is marked by the brightly-lit Interstate Highway I-10 that cuts across the city. Although the area of El Paso, with an estimated population of slightly more than 600,000 is roughly on the order of the area of built-up Ciudad Juaréz, the density of settlement evidenced by the distribution of lights, is much less. (Evans & Stefanov, 2008)

NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) created "the first world map of the nighttime Earth" (Evans & Stefanov, 2008), using data collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite from an altitude of 830 kilometers above Earth, over 9 months. The Korean peninsula is clearly divided into South and North in the night; with lights in the capitalist Korean Republic covering up the entire Southern end of the peninsula, while its neighbour, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, remain mostly unlit.

Evans, C. & Stefanov, W. (2008) Cities at Night: The View from Space. [Online]
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CitiesAtNight/ [08/07/2010]

San Fransisco Crime Map

The peaks crime in San Francisco are visualised by Doug Mccune, "converting crime figures into topology"  (McCandless, 2010). Data was retrieved from DataSF and is interpreted into 3D image by the artist (Mccune, 2010).

McCandless, D. (2010) Four Great Infographics No. 8. [Online]
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/fourgreat-infographics-no-8/ [08/07/2010]

Mccune, D. (2010) If San Francisco Crime were Elevation. [Online]

http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime-was-elevation/ [08/07/2010]

NYTimes Visualises Data

A Year of Parking Tickets

With data from New York City Department of Finance and Department of City Planning, Matthew Bloch and Amanda Cox visualised data of numbers of parking tickets issued in New York City on Google Map (Bloch & Coxa, 2008). The map is interactive and locates 9,955,441 parking tickets issued by New York City agencies between July 2007 and June 2008. 13% of the tickets could not be located. 

Matthew Bloch, Amanda Cox, Jo Craven McGinty and Kevin Quealy, also on Google Map, created an interactive map which examines the 2009 Netflix rental patterns, neighborhood by neighborhood, in a dozen U.S. cities, illustrating patterns of titles within each city (Bloch, Cox, McGinty Quealy, 2010).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys

Bloch, M., Cox, A., McGinty, J.C., & Quealy, K. (2010) A Peek Into Netflix Queues. [Online]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html [08/07/2010]
Bloch, M. & Coxa, A. (2008) Year of Parking Tickets. [Online]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/26/nyregion/20081128_PARKING.html [08/07/2010]


Social Explorer [2010] 
http://www.socialexplorer.com/pub/home/home.aspx [08/07/2010]

Panoramio over Berlin

The image above was created by Bluemoon, a designers group in Estonia, based on analysis of photos of Panoramio, which takes into account how many photos and their authors are in the area, converting the data in to colours: yellow is high, red medium, blue low, and grey for areas without available photographs  [Bluemoon, 2010]. 

Panoramio is a site where "members determine the content" and the photos focus on geographical locations, which can also reflect a level of social trends by relating distribution of photographs. Each photo, some under copyleft and Creative Commons license, is also a candidate for transfer to the Google Earth Panoramio layer and selected images are transferred every month [Panoramio, 2010a & 2010b].

Codes:

Panoramio API - Display photos from Panoramio on your own website. [Online]

http://www.panoramio.com/api/data/api.html [08/07/2010]

Bluemoon [2010] World Touristiness Map. [Online] 

http://www.bluemoon.ee/~ahti/touristiness-map/ [08/07/2010]

Panoramio [2010a] Copyright Status of Posted Photos. [Online] 

http://www.panoramio.com/help/policies_legalities [08/07/2010]

Panoramio [2010b] Welcome to the Panoramio Community. [Online] 

http://www.panoramio.com/help/ [08/07/2010]

Twitter search for "Wall in the Head"

The only search result which came up for the term "Mauer im Kopf" - or "Wall in the head" in German, which is used to describe the East-West German division on perceptions or values that still remain today - is shown above. Only one.

Maybe it's a good thing.

Skorbi09 (2010) Realtime results for mauer im kopf. [Online]
http://twitter.com/#search?q=mauer%20im%20kopf [06/07/2010]

Sigmar Polke dies at 69

"Sigmar Polke was born Feb. 13, 1941, in Oels, in the Silesian region of eastern Germany in what is now western Poland. His family, with five or six children, fled west to Tubingen in 1945 as the Russian Army advanced but still wound up in East Germany as World War II ended. In 1953 they moved to East Berlin and crossed over to West Berlin on the subway. The young Mr. Polke pretended to be asleep to contribute to the air of normality." (Smith, 2010)

Smith, R. (2010) Sigmar Polke, Whose Sly Works Shaped Contemporary Painting, Dies at 69. [Online] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/arts/design/12polke.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 [05/07/2010]

Who am I? Animation

An image of individuals made of smaller elements/dots, showing changing lives/variables and illustrating identity and character.

Animation from the Science Museum website

"What makes you uniquely you? The Who am I? gallery investigates everyone's favourite subject - themselves." [Science Museum, 2010]

Science Museum [2010] Who am I? [Online] 
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/WhoAmI.aspx [05/07/2010]

Jonathan Harris & Data Visualisation

Various data visualisations by Jonathan Harris, a co-creator of We Feel Fine. Some are interactive. 10x10 updates news and categorises them into a grid of images.

Getting Around: Transportation Today

Commissioned by the International Networks Archive (INA) at Princeton University, Jonathan Harris created Information Maps. Harris developed INA's "experimental mapping philosophy, and the way it merges data, maps and technology" which aims to develop "a new way of mapping our world, based on global transactions instead of geography" (Harris, 2009).

10x10 is a project that scans the RSS feeds of "several leading international news sources" every hour, performing "an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories" (Harris, 2004). Without any human input, 10x10 culls news stories and automatically chooses "the hour's most important" 100 words and corresponding corresponding images. This process is repeated every day, month, and year, and from its archives can select the top 100 words for the given time period, producing "a constantly evolving record of our world... based on prominent world events" (Harris, 2004). Its interface is interactive, with a grid of the top 100 world images of that hour, ranked in order and listed corresponding top 100 words.

10x10 collects data from Reuters World News, BBC World Edition and New York Times International News, and photographs from the "aforementioned news sources" with their copyright ownership held by those sources, and is built using Perl, MySQL, PHP, and Macromedia Flash  (Harris, 2004).

10x10 Nov 05 2008

WordCount, with data from the British National Corpus, ranks the 86,800 most frequently used English words, scaling each word "to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance" (Harris, 2003). The British National Corpus collects 100 million words written and spoken language and is "designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage".

"WordCount was designed with a minimalist aesthetic, to let the information speak for itself" and "the goal is for the user to feel embedded in the language, sifting through words like an archaeologist through sand, awaiting the unexpected find" (Harris, 2003). Harris also notes that "observing closely ranked words tells us a great deal about our culture. For instance, 'God' is one word from 'began', two words from 'start', and six words from 'war'. Another sequence is 'america ensure oil opportunity'... As ever, the more one explores, the more is revealed" (Harris, 2003).

Significant Income Wall Reported

Harris, J. (2009) Information Maps. 2003. [Online]
http://number27.org/maps.html [05/07/2010]
Harris, J. (2004) 10x10. 2004. [Online]
http://tenbyten.org/info.html [05/07/2010]
Harris, J. (2003) WordCount. [Online]

http://wordcount.org/about.html [05/07/2010]

INA [2010] Telephone Trafic (Outgoing) [Online]
http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/maps/dynamic/index.html [05/07/2010]