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Words by Simon Rogers
Information is Beautiful
Data journalist and design whiz David McCandless’ Information is Beautiful blog is a treasure-trove of cool visualisations and mash-ups. His work has also been published in a bestselling book of the same name.
Flowing Data
If someone, somewhere, is producing a great data visualisation or analysis, Nathan Yau’s blog will find it. Yau has an unerring ability to unearth the best data visualisations on the web. He also produces graphics, and is a regular poster to the Guardian Datastore Flickr group.
Patrick Cain’s Map Blog
Canadian Patrick Cain is a ‘journalist who makes maps for the web’. Based in Toronto, Cain takes the city’s data and maps it – producing guides to everything from crime figures to World War I deaths and single parent families. A fan of open data, Cain has a record of demanding data from the city’s authorities using Freedom of Information laws.
Timetric
If you’re looking for time series economic data – and a nifty way of creating a sophisticated, embeddable graphic – this is the place to come. Timetric updates thousands of datasets every day and provides an easy-to-use interface that makes it very simple to create your own.
OWNI
Although a lot of the best data work is done in English, Paris-based OWNI is a collective of geeks and data freaks producing visualisations and apps that manage to be imaginative and innovative. The collective’s work on Wikileaks – which allowed people to interrogate the data – won a 2010 Online Journalism Award for General Excellence.
Guardian Datablog
The Guardian and its Datablog publishes raw data behind the news every day, and encourages readers to visualise and work with it. The site publishes its data using Google spreadsheets and Google Fusion Tables, and allows readers to search thousands of government datasets around the world.
Infochimps
The big brains at Infochimps have come up with an innovative way to find, share and sell formatted data. Both users and the site’s own contributors collate and scrape datasets so that they’re easily accessible. With big plans for expansion and lots of intelligent developers onboard, it’s definitely one to watch.
DataMarket
This brand new site combines an innovative data search function with bright and imaginative visualisations. It also allows you to create your own, download them and put them in your PowerPoint presentation or company report.
It might be better known for its impact on the world of social media, but LinkedIn also has a hugely innovative approach to data. LinkedIn has made collating and using data a priority, with lead data scientists completely integrated into the commercial operation.
London Datastore
Governments around the globe are opening up their data, from data.gov in the US, via Australia, the UK, New Zealand and France. One of the best and most useful is the London Datastore. Created by the Greater London Authority, it publishes thousands of datasets with the emphasis on useful, live data, such as transport and economic numbers. Developers are using those figures to create interesting apps, such as Matthew Somerville’s live train map for the London Underground.
More from this writer
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Grazie! The Knowledge. Simon Rogers' 10 Best Sites for Data Viz | Think Quarterly
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