Moving information around the web

One thing that's great about the electronic world is that you can have all sorts of information sources linked together. As soon as you update the master, the other places automatically get the update. There are a million more useful applications of this concept, but a fun application I played with this weekend was my Facebook Status.

For no reason other that 'because I could' I decided to try to get my Facebook status synchronised with my Twitter account and my Google Chat status. Why have three different status messages (at least two of which must therefore be 'out of date') when you can have just one?

Through a lot of Googling Here's what I came up with:

This blog isn't about tech stuff, so I won't go in to how to do it here (except to say this pipe and this blog will give you what you need).

While I was doing this, it gave me another idea for a way to use similar technology. I used FindMe (from the guys at Electric Pocket) on my BlackBerry, which made it recognise when I'm in certain locations and posts them to my Facebook profile. I thought this was kinda fun. 'David is at work', 'David is at home', that kind of thing.

I thought it would be fun to have that information automatically store in my calendar. That way I could look back and see what time I got in to work, what time I got home, etc. Here's what I came up with, using the excellent similar LocaTags BlackBerry application and a Yahoo! Pipe:
It got me interested because its free information. To get it I don't need to keep a diary. I don't need to keep timesheets in the office. I don't need to do anything other than one off effort of setting up this arrangement (which was fun!).

And one of my mottos is that when there is free data you can gather, never turn it down. You just don't know when it might be useful ...

Posted 12th June 2008 by David B

Labels: calendar facebook feeds friends sharing

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David BJune 14, 2008 at 2:42 PM
Using the same basic principles, I have now wired up my Friends' Facebook feed to both a CSV export (last 1,000) and to Google Calendars!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beglen/2577066431/
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Info Clarity

One of the great things about the world today is the amount of information out there. However, using it to help people make decisions is one of the great challenges of today. Too often information its not used, not used properly or not made accessible. This blog is about helping people make great decisions using data.

May

29

Dance music in two dimensions

Pete Tong's International Music Summit last week gave me the perfect excuse to use one of my favourite visualisations. Here we use EMI's consumer insight to look at how passionate 17 countries are about dance music.

To get a good picture of what's happening you need to think about not just what percent of people are passionate, but also what that means in terms of the number of people who are passionate. So I like to chart them both and then join them with lines.

This allows you to pretty quickly draw out some fascinating observations. For example: just look at how low the passion is for dance music in the US and yet it's such a big country that it has by far the most people passionate about dance music.

Whereas the UK scores pretty high on both metrics. I called it the 'biggest developed market'.

My full report is here and EMI have made all of this data available by country by demographic group by genre. Take the data and have fun with it! Please share what you come up with!

Posted 29th May 2012 by David B

Labels: charts music PowerToThePeople sharing

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May

9

It's all about the people

I gave a talk at the Big Data Insight Group in London recently and they've just posted my talk online.

I talk about how we've helped EMI Music make use of data and about how we're doing so in zeebox.

One of the themes throughout my talk is the importance of people. Both in terms of how we use data to help people make decisions and about how we need to understand the people we're trying to help, in order to give them what we need. Technology enables this, but without the right people and without understanding people, technology is as good as useless.

I also talk about how important skills and judgement are. And that, although it's sometimes seen as the things that drives decisions, it's usually or perhaps always used alongside skills and judgement.

I think that admitting to the role of skills and judgement isn't being 'anti-data'. I think that being honest about this enables and empowers us to better use data in the right ways. And it certainly helps people to feel comfortable with data, also!

With the right people in place and data playing the right role in an organisation, the opportunity for data to help an organisation is massive. The way that EMI Music has embraced data across the organisation alongside skills and judgement shows that this is the case.

Posted 9th May 2012 by David B

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Mar

30

Knowing when to use data and what to use it for

We all know there are decisions where you need data to help you make them and there are decisions where data just isn't that important. This morning XKCD did a wonderful job of illustrating it. http://xkcd.com/1036/

Buying a lamp is a creative decision. Turn your eye away from the reviews and go with your heart :)

The same is true of many decisions data folks are asked to help with every day in organisations. We shouldn't be afraid to champion this strategy there, either!

Posted 30th March 2012 by David B

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Mar

28

A conversation with the Big Data Insight Group

We sat down recently to talk data and insight. Here is what we talked about, plus a little video of me talking about insight at both zeebox and EMI.

http://www.thebigdatainsightgroup.com/site/article/david-boyle-emi-zeebox-data-driven-includes-video

Posted 28th March 2012 by David B

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Mar

4

What's a data scientist?

I don't like the term 'scientist' as it makes the role sound unaccessible and elite. Google's Hal Varian said "the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians" ... but I don't like that term either. I'd replace 'statisticians' with 'working with data' or something ... and then I believe it! I think data people have a tendency to overplay the role of the 'statistics' and magic of it and underplay the importance of the 'bringing it to life' and 'helping people understand / make use of it' parts of working with data.

I thought about this because of this cool article in The Guardian about data scientists.

As it points out, "science" is defined as "systematic study of natural or physical phenomena". I guess that's us all. Perhaps I shouldn't shy away from that phrase.

The journalist describes the role well, as "someone who can bridge the raw data and the analysis - and make it accessible. It's a democratising role; by bringing the data to the people, you make the world just a little bit better." Perfect, eh?

One last quote: "the four qualities of a great data scientist are creativity, tenacity, curiosity, and deep technical skills." That list sounds pretty good to me, also. So perhaps I should rename this the 'data scientist' blog and be done :)

Posted 4th March 2012 by David B

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Mar

2

The life of an analyst: Fun with charts

Some fun from http://fosslien.com/ via http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/29/the-life-of-the-number-crunching-analyst/

I particularly like this one:

Posted 2nd March 2012 by David B

Labels: charts

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Feb

7

New sparklines in Google Spreadsheets are AWESOME

So much data, so easily displayed in such a small but easy to understand format. I need say no more. I'm in love with the new sparlklines just made available in Google Spreadsheets: http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2371371

It's this simple:

Google Spreadsheets is rapidly becoming my go to choice for building business dashboards. Bye, bye cost. Bye, bye developers (would be VERY sad not to work with them, of course). Bye, bye Microsoft!

Posted 7th February 2012 by David B

Labels: charts Google sparklines

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Feb

3

Data as the new 'black gold'

I spoke on a panel last night on the subject 'data as the new black gold'. There are three challenges I think this metaphor poses to the data world.

First, that of crude oil. Data is everywhere in organisations, but too often left in it's crude form: gloopy and unusable. The oil industry had to work this out before it could be mainstream. It had to refine oil to a form that works for consumers day-to-day and it had to make it available to consumers in ways that fitted in to their daily life. It's trivial to stop by a petrol station and pick up some oil in a format you can instantly make use of. Data doesn't yet work the same way: it's rare to find an organisation that appropriately refines it and then makes it available to it's people in a way they can access and make use of as part of their day-to-day work.

Second, I think we need to demand higher 'miles per gallon' from our data. Often we gather fantastic raw data, capable of being a really powerful part of decision making ... but then business leaders don't ask interesting questions of it. They don't demand smart analysis and challenge the data to offer insight. It's like demanding that cars offer higher miles per gallon from the oil they are burning.

Finally, I think we need to embrace hybrid technology. In cars that's about oil being only part of the story for how the car gets powered. In data it's about saying that data is only part of the story for how organisations get powered. We need to be honest and bold about the role of skills & judgement alongside data in powering organisations. Too many people believe / pretend that data alone can power organisations to greatness. Everything I've seen tells me that data is necessary but not sufficient: smart people to use the data alongside their expertise is ALWAYS required. The data world should be honest about this and build data and systems around that truth. I've always found that has a much greater impact :)

Posted 3rd February 2012 by David B

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Dec

26

Sometimes words can replace data

I've used a lot of word clouds recently. But I think of them as charts really, since they are still pretty faithful to the underlying data. The size of the word is proportional to the number of times that word is in the data set. Simple.

But reading a cool data visualization book I came across this. Really it not based on 'data', but it's interesting his words and their location on the page conveys such a lot of information. Perhaps some good, well placed words can replace the need to chart actual data?

http://creativeroots.org/2011/03/italy-infographic-map/

Posted 26th December 2011 by David B

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Nov

7

Little sparklines in hospital notes

Simple, easy to read, but really powerful. Nice little sparklines spotted in the papers from the 20 week scan my wife just had. Cool little chart like this should be everywhere!

And by the way, it's a boy!

Posted 7th November 2011 by David B

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