Sep. 02 2010

jstn:

This is something I’ve been working on for a long time, and now that we’ve reached the height of hurricane season I’m excited to reveal it.

radarmatic:

Radarmatic is a weather radar visualizer. It uses HTML5 and its own API to draw radar images with live data from the National Weather Service.

The white dots on the map represent 155 radar sites across the US. As you drag it around, the radar closest to the center of the map will light up with its most recent data. The colored areas show where precipitation is occurring at varying levels of intensity. Pushing play will animate the last few hours.

The imagery is not pre-generated, but rather drawn in-browser with Javascript. For this reason it can be processor intensive, especially while animating. Safari and Chrome are recommended over Firefox.

I’ve always wanted to do something with radar data. The NWS creates an incredible wealth of information available every day about the physical world around us, but it’s locked away in an obscure binary file format developed long before the web. In order to visualize the data the way I wanted to, much bigger and in crazier colors than I’d ever seen used for weather radar before, I needed to translate it to a format I already understood.

After many hours of research and fumbling around with a hex editor, I wrote a program in C called radar2json to convert the binary product files from the NWS into JSON (and which I’ve open sourced under the MIT license). I built a web service around it that anyone can use.

From a user interface standpoint, I set out to make something that puts as much focus as possible on the imagery itself and drastically reduces the friction of moving through it. Every other interface to radar data I’ve seen so far is scientifically oriented and does a poor job of being tactile and interactive, which I think is important for making a rich impression of what’s happening in our physical environment.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. And keep your eye on the Carolinas in the next 24 hours!

sam champion eat your heart out.

Aug. 25 2010

soxiam:

Geckoboard - Realtime Business Status Board

so there is a fun, navel-gazing post about how today is my 28th birthday and whoa is me/white man troubles but hey, let’s keep it light for now.  as much as i’d love one of these in my office, i think i might try and set one up for my life.  uptime of my site, e-mails i have to respond to, calls i have to get back to, the “honey do” list into basecamp.

it can happen.  and then i’ll try for a walk-on roll for big bang theory and the face time percentage with my girlfriend will probably go up.  ;)

Jun. 14 2010

I am wondering…

And is there data that shouldn’t be passed on?

it’s impossible to understand what will matter or who will care about it.  one of my favorite things about recording in the present is that there will be context about me for others later in life.

we all bear what others leave behind.  i’m set to head into drobo-land and open up the flood gates.  will it all be around afterwards?  i don’t know.  i’m connecting dots now so someone can draw a picture later.  don’t worry about what you’ll leave behind and don’t be afraid of keeping it now.

the story always gets told.

Feb. 09 2010

hybrowse.com

jakelodwick:

What have you been up to, Jake?

…

I build a generalized platform for these buttons and called it Kwisi, short for “Know When I See It”, and started testing on some friends’ sites (like the Photojojo Store). The name referred to the idea that sometimes you don’t know exactly what you want — you just have to look around and see what catches your eye. When you do a Google Search, for example, you have some word in mind, and you’re attempting to go directly to it. But what if you’re just in the mood to shop? What if you want to see something new, something innovative, or strange, or obscure, or foreign? Traditional web search isn’t that helpful. So I thought I would install this platform on other sites, who would change their whole webstore around to accommodate me.

…

My philosophy here is that search engines are 20-year-old technology and we need new ways of navigating the endless data that is piling up every day. To that end, I have committed to Hybrowse as a four-month project. I will continue working full-time on it until May 1st (at the very least). This is not a startup company, it is my attempt to make life more manageable for anyone who feels overwhelmed with data. If you feel that is a noble goal then please play with the site and let me know how I can improve it. Very few things are “locked in” and it’s very easy to make changes, so if you have any opinions, please send them to me at jake@hybrowse.com. I want to know your thoughts; it’s hard for me to see the site very clearly anymore, by myself.

But before I go, I will make this more interesting and supply some new ammunition for anyone who thinks I am crazy. The crazy thing is this. By May 1st I will have 1,000 services on Hybrowse. Yes, that’s 998 more than I have right now (Netflix and Etsy). I consider this goal “impossible” and will, by any rational calculation, fail hilariously, but I don’t care — I need an audacious goal that gets my adrenaline pumping, and 100 doesn’t do it. 1000 sites. I’m like a local car salesman on tv. “THESE GOALS ARE INSANE!!!”

I genuinely think the site would be profoundly useful if it had 1,000 services. Picture it. You land on the home page and use the same “overlapping tags” mechanism to discover, say, Swedish housewares stores, then pick one, then browse their overpriced euroshit. Or you sort through Match.com profiles and try to find ones that don’t look like monsters. I don’t know how it will work. But I’m going to do it and I want your suggestions … and this is going to be a very busy couple months and I have to go now, because I suddenly realized I have a lot of effing work to do.

jake@hybrowse.com

(ps: Peter Vidani did the site’s visual design)

this is great, jake.  i really hope you reach your goal b/c the approach is absolutely necessary.  1,000 is a smart number too.

Nov. 04 2009

herosquad:

foursquare announced insights data for local businesses will be added soon.  The venue will be able to gather check-in data and learn more about the patterns of their customers.

what’s important here is the kind of data businesses get about a certain kind of customer.  sure, there are other ways to measure this type of stuff.  look at sales trends, inventory data, etc. but that puts all your customers on the same plane and shows growth opportunity on a singular plane as well.

how can a business appeal and adjust for the portion of their audience who is highly-engaged (this is a generalization because i mean more than just “online”)?  data, systems and tools like this are a start.

Oct. 27 2009

Simulmedia

zachklein:

I recently learned about a fascinating data-driven company called Simulmedia. They buy raw data from set-top box companies like Tivo and analyze it. Among many other things, they learn when a user watched what and and for how long. With a set of millions of users, they identify viewing patterns and can predict with certainty how receptive you might be to one television program given that you voluntarily watch some other one.

What’s interesting is their business model. Instead of selling the clean data back to the networks like we’d expect, they go back and ask, for example, “How many viewers would you like us to deliver to Mad Men?” Then they take the network’s own marketing assets, like a 15-second trailer, buy commercial slots on other networks, and target the viewers of specific shows who they know will be receptive to Mad Men. In turn, they get paid for the uptick they promised.

New media bounty hunters. I’m very impressed.

very smart.  in other news, this past week’s mad men was indeed very good (as everyone says it was).  however, all of the data this company is hedging its bets on had nothing to do with me - i downloaded the season from itunes.  so, kudos to optimizing an aging business model?  i’m sure they have big plans for when people start to ditch tv in general - well, let’s hope.

Oct. 26 2009

jackcheng:

“Time is a material.”

Matt Jones of Berg’s presentation, “All the time in the world” is a springboard into so many interesting avenues regarding time, space and design. Seen here is Michel Gondry’s lo-fi “making of” video for the Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar video.

this can be some pretty heavy stuff if you let it be.  matt is one of the guys who works on dopplr.  at the heart of all this:  as humans, we create context.  signals, data, physical things, non-physical things.  items that define our existence and and help us function.  ”time” is one of those things.  pulling from the (great) presentation, at some point in the 17th century, we separated “time” from our existence with the belief that we weren’t connected.  it existed on a wholly seperate plane almost dictating existence.  when, arguably, it’s the opposite.  how do we keep track of “time?”

a clock.  a clock that a human created.  hopefully, this analogy rings true.

furthermore, matt from february of this year:

I’m still convinced that hereish-and-soonish/thereish-and-thenish are the grain we need to be exploring rather than just connecting a network of the pulsing ‘blue-dot’.

accuracy is a tenant of context.  you need something to be mathematically accurate (longitude & latitude) in order to build on top of it but so what if i’m on a street corner somewhere?  what am i doing?  what have i done?  will i be back?  what have i done there in the past?  will it be happening again?

it happens in the sub-conscious, but we (humans) learn from our interactions with each other.  learned behavior.  if i’m hanging out with friends, i might expect to do it again in a location and want to include others and at the same time - i’ll tailor what we do based on what we’ve done.

think of networks as vehicles (maybe platforms).  am i twittering?  no.  i’m giving you context.

Feb. 04 2009

the art of letting go.

how do i feel?  pretty okay.  honestly, it’s not bothering me that much.  odds are, i’d probably never get much use out of them anyway.

i’m one of the few (or maybe one of the many) who lost a lot of data when ma.gnolia went down last week.  it’s looking grim.  there are ways to recover stuff by parsing this and digging up that.  unfortunately, for me, i’ve got nothing to dig at.  none of my bookmarks were public.  none.  zero.  ”did you ever back them up?”  no, i didn’t.  yes, i’m quite savvy.  no, i wasn’t as responsible as i should’ve been with this data.  do i regret this?  mehhh.

zero out of, probably, several thousand.  at least three thousand.  probably somewhere around five.  these bookmarks had been carefully cultivated since 1993.  almost everything i ever wanted to “remember” on the web.  for the longest time, they sat on whichever computer i used.  when everyone started using delicious, i didn’t.  i couldn’t get into it.  not necessarily the concept, more the product.  i resisted the lucrative social bookmarking scene.  from afar, it mocked me with its overly useful community.

when i finally decided to “get social” with my stuff, and after much research, i settled on magnolia as a better product to use.  i didn’t care about the community on the site itself.  i cared more about the tools at my disposal.  they would let me do more of what i wanted to do.  jeff croft was a big part of this and, a considered authority, convinced me.

off i went, importing what i had and seeking out new.  nothing was public.  i wanted to meticulously tag, rate and give descriptions to all my bookmarks.  unleashing them on a web like a bag full ‘o awesome.  it never happened.  i certainly didn’t have the patience to do all of that to thousands and thousands of links.  would you?  i even considered hiring someone to do it for me.  occasionaly, i’d need to find something and i searched for it.  i either find it, or i didn’t.  if it wasn’t in ma.gnolia, it was in google notebook or google reader or on instapaper or in my e-mail.  it was always somewhere.

then, i lost them all.  at first, i did an “oh shit.”  i felt like i should be really mad.  there went all the “important stuff” out the window, and i’ll probably never get it back again.  that awesome recipe for the best pancakes ever?  gone.  the top 10 work-outs for people who never exercise?  gone.  what would i do.  a digital babylon, falling around me.

then, you know what?  i was okay with it.  still am.  i can’t explain it.  there is certainly lots of psychobabble i could go into about the connection we have to our “stuff.”  the digital infoglut, yadda, yadda, yadda.

maybe someday i’ll wish i had that link.  i’ll search for it.  the semantic web and search is and will be driving human interaction.  i trust i’ll be able to find it.  it’s all out there anyway, right?

do i start fresh?  maybe.  maybe not.  i have a few hundred things on google notebook that i’m not overly excited about clearing out before that bites the dust.  i have about 1,500 articles on instapaper.  it’ll all still sit there.  i won’t back it up.  i won’t fret about it.

i’ll use it when i need it and life will go on.

Oct. 27 2008

boot

ratcliffe-lee:

say your computer decides not to boot in any way except for in safe mode.

say you own a 2 Gb flash drive and have never backed up the 100Gb of data on your hard drive.

what do you save?  your college essays or your photographic life history?

photos all the way.  all my college essays do for me these days is remind me about the stuff i don’t need to write about ever again.

Oct. 15 2008

Data is almost as good as money, but I don’t don’t know of a single consumer Web application where access to data is guaranteed by a third-party private entity, much less by the government.
Subtraction 7.1 Beta: A Cloud and a Prayer