Compare USA to Other Countries

World travelers and students of world affairs should like this Google mashup, "If It Were My Home".  Compare country size and statistics for USA vs Afghanistan, Argentina, or any country in the world.  If you love visuals, this is a good way to look at comparison statistics.  

The site also helps you visualize disasters like the 2010 Pakistan flood or the BP oil spill. 


The site was designed by Annette Calabrese and developed by Andy Lintner.

TimeSpace - Washington Post Visualization Tool

The Washington Post introduced a cool visualization tool for seeing where its articles take place in the world. TimeSpace: World is a "mashup" of click-able locations on a map where news items occur. The interactive map allows you to see articles, photos, video and commentary from around the world.

From a California perspective, it appears that the Washington Post doesn't think much is happening on the West Coast. If the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't fold, this might be a good addition to SFGate.

ZeeMaps Powered by Google

Today, I learned to upload thousands of YMCA locations into a map thanks to ZeeMaps at ZeeSource, an open source company. I knew how to add one location at a time on Google Maps, but needed to learn how to add hundreds or thousands of locations. In order to do that, you need geocoded information in one of two forms:

• a database with longitude and latitude information or
• an excel spreadsheet in CSV format.

I learned about comma-separated values or CSV format. Using an excel spreadsheet of YMCA locations, I "saved as" in CSV format. CSV format does not allow for the following puctuation marks: " . , [ ] ( ) so I did a "find and replace" to eliminate unwanted marks. Early on, I sent an e-mail question and got an immediate response from the founder of ZeeSource, Pankaj Garg.

Next, I created my map! There is a menu bar to explore:

• Map - create, name, describe
• View
• Additions - Upload CSV file
• Edit Grids
• Deletions
• Customizations
• Print or Share
• Settings

Now to identify databases to pull information that would make an impact when visually displayed. Ideas that come to mind include: school equity issues such as schools that have no teacher librarians or subscription databases. Any other good ideas?

Cool Tools - Mashup the Library Demos

It has become a tradition at the annual CARL North IT workshop to end the already information-packed day with a few short "cool tools" demonstrations. Here are the three demos for the 2008 workshop, Mashup the Library: An introduction to mashup technology and the art of remixing library and information resources:

#1: “Bookshelf Visualization"
“Virtual Shelf” is a student project created for the Open Library Project of Internet Archive. UC Berkeley Information School graduate students Devin Blong and Jonathan Breithart presented [see photo]. Several members of the audience wondered aloud -- will we see these two bright, young students someday as famous high tech, high profile stars? UC Berkeley's iSchool must be a facinating place to learn and grow.

#2: “Google Visualization Tools for Numeric Data”
Harrison Dekker of UC Berkeley, Coordinator of Data Services, Doe/Moffitt Libraries, introduced us to some wonderful data tools. Exploring these will keep me busy!
See http://spreadsheets.google.com/ for Google analytics.
Spreadsheet widgets – SF weather, stats, housing, population, % subprime loans
“Add a gadget” is a motion chart.
Check out Google Finance
iGoogle – put your widgets there.
Google Charts. See http://chart.aps.google.com/

#3: LibGuides
Laura Moody, Librarian, San Francisco State University ended the workshop with a demonstration of LibGuides for the J. Paul Leonard Library, which shares library information and bring together several Web 2.0 applications into the research guide environment. The system helps librarians publish and share information online, while highlighting and promoting library resources and services to the community. Check it out. See how other libraries are using it.

Information Visualization Using Mashups and Web 2.0 Tools

Here is a third post about the CARL IT workshop, "Mashup the Library" from July 25, 2008. The third presenter in this information-packed day at Santa Clara University was Jill Tinsley of the University of Arizona. Jill's topic was “Information Visualization Using Mashups and Web 2.0 Tools.” [ The photo shows CARL North IT Co-President Sheila Cunningham and Jill Tinsley. ]

Jill showed the audience a whirlwind tour of visual sites grouped into three categories: searching, news, searches-photos. I'm listing some of the many sites so I can go back and look at them again.

Visual searching:

• Grokker – free web version organizes things logically. Jill likes it better than Google.
• Kartoo
• Quintura and Quintura Kids.
• Oskope lets you search Amazon, E-Bay, and other databases.
• Like for online visual shopping.

Visual news:

• Reverbiage - NPR stories
• Marumushi – top US news
• Digg Labs arc - stories arrange themselves around a colorful circle
• Digg Labs/stack – real time activity. Stories "fall from above"
• Digg labs big spy
• Digg labs swarm
• Searchmapr (Google, Yahoo, Trynt) - note: "Searching - Please Be Patient" Check out your town, school, or local library -- who knows what you will find.
• Room for milk - "fresh skimmed Slashdot headlines"- color coded by "freshness" Note that Slashdot is described as "news for nerds." - techie news that relys on news and comments by its subscribers.
• Buzz tracker

Visual searches – photos

• Idee labs
• BYO Image Search Labs -- so colorful and cool!
• Amadig – YouTube and Amazon - "graphical Amazon browser"
• Visual Twitter (size)
• Tuneglue – will relate to other artists. "Music map"
• Musicmesh
• Flight wait – real time flight conditions.
• Onondaga County Public Library (Aqua Browser)
• Web Brain – shows relationships "smartest way to see the web"
• Tafiti (must first download)
• Vima Visual Image/maps
• Piclens -- check it out!
• Viewzi
  www.searchme.com/jilltinsley
  http://www.slideshare.net/
  scu.edu/library or encore.scu.edu – tagging

Web 2.0 Mashups: Making the Web Your Own

Here is a second post about a presentation at the annual summer CARL North IT workshop, "Mashup the Library."

Presenter Raymond Yee, UC Berkeley School of Information professor, teaches a course on “Mixing and Re-mixing Information.” He has also written a book on “Web 2.0 Mashups: Making the Web Your Own.” He showed us the first example of a mash-up: a mix of Craig’s List of hosing rentals and Google Maps, thus creating a powerful way to house-hunt by using housingmaps.com. Google could have squawked, but instead it released an API that formalizes how to use Google Maps for mashing.

See Ray's wiki for more on his presentation and book at Mashupthelibrary20080725.

Another example is the Library Lookup Project by John Udell. He created a Bookmarklet in Java script, which uses the standard ISBN number to mash AMAZON and Public Libraries (OCLC). Be sure to spend time looking at the many examples of Library Lookup Projects!

A third example is Geotagging with Flickr.com and Google Maps greasemonkey script.
Yahoo! Pipes – visual programming. This was used to mash NYTimes.com World Section with Google Maps. There is a mini tutorial on the Yahoo! Pipes site, but it might be blocked at your worksite -- go to a library to check it out.

Zotero.com is an extension of Firefox. It does bibliographic citation. Zotero could be a mashup program because it can grab bibliographic metadata from Amazon.com

So many web 2.0 tools -- so much to learn! Enjoy.