Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
The NYTimes moves an interesting short today describing how a couple of economists did some creative analysis suggesting that Oprah was worth a million-plus primary votes for Obama.
MEDIA TALK Endorsement From Winfrey Quantified: A Million Votes
By BRIAN STELTER Published: August 10, 2008
Presidential candidates make the most of celebrity supporters, showing them off in television ads and propping them on podiums to stand and wave. No doubt Mike Huckabee’s aborted campaign for the Republican nomination got some sort of bump from those commercials of him with Chuck Norris, right?
Or maybe not. Politicians and pundits routinely claim that celebrity endorsements have little sway on voters, and two economists set out recently to test the premise. What they found was that at least one celebrity does hold influence in the voting booth: Oprah Winfrey.
The economists, Craig Garthwaite and Timothy Moore of the University of Maryland, College Park, contend that Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama last year gave him a boost of about one million votes in the primaries and caucuses. Their conclusions were based partly on a county-by-county analysis of subscriptions to O: The Oprah Magazine and sales figures for books that were included in her book club.
Those data points were cross-referenced with the votes cast for Mr. Obama in various polling precincts. The results showed a correlation between magazine sales and the vote share obtained by Mr. Obama, and extrapolated an effect of 1,015,559 votes.
“We think people take political information from all sorts of sources in their daily life,” Mr. Moore said in an e-mail message, “and for some people Oprah is clearly one of them.”
In their as-yet-unpublished research paper on the topic, the economists trace celebrity endorsements back to the 1920 campaign of Warren Harding (who had Al Jolson, Lillian Russell and Douglas Fairbanks in his corner), and call Ms. Winfrey “a celebrity of nearly unparalleled influence.”
The economists did not, however, look at how Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement of Mr. Obama may have affected her own popularity. A number of people — women in particular — were angry that Ms. Winfrey threw her first-ever political endorsement to a man rather than his female opponent.
The research did not try to measure the influence of other stars’ endorsements; for instance, no similar measures were available for Obama supporters like the actress Jessica Alba or Pete Wentz of the band Fall Out Boy. “If a celebrity endorsement is ever going to have an empirically identifiable audience, then it is likely to be hers,” the researchers said of Ms. Winfrey. Sorry, Chuck Norris.
Joe Francica and the other good folks at Directions Magazine and their “All Points Blog” just moved an interesting story headlined below. No doubt this will call for some tweaking of projections and a ton of storage space, depending on your area of interest, but it also bodes well for those arguing about who should have access to the data taxpayers have already paid for.
“Speaking at the ESRI UC Senior Executive Summit in San Diego, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, announced that the 35 years of archived Landsat data will be made available over the web free to the public by the end of the year. The EROS Data Center (EDC) of the USGS will be the lead center to implement this initiative. Though not mentioned specifically, it's likely that some of the data may be released through EDC's EarthExplorer portal that was a pilot project begun last year for Landsat 7 data.
“Listen to my interview with Secretary Kempthorne and USGS Director Mark Myers regarding the announcement of the Landsat data and a follow up questions I asked regarding the USGS's roll in providing policy-makers information about the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and offshore drilling.”
A new version of Flare, the data visualization toolkit for Actionscript (which means it runs in Flash), was just released yesterday with a number of major improvements from the previous version. The toolkit was created and is maintained by the UC Berkeley Visualization Lab and was one of the first bits of Actionscript that I got my hands on. The effort-to-output ratio was pretty satisfying, so if you want to learn Acitonscript for data visualization, check out Flare. The tutorial is a good place to start.
Here are some sample applications created with Flare:
The phrases “community journalism” and “convergence journalism” have been around for decades (in the case of the former) and at least 10 years in the case of the latter. For a long time, “community journalism” referred to the publishing of “…a small daily, 20,000 or less, or maybe a larger weekly or twice- or thrice-weekly.” And “convergence” most often talked about using various print and Audio/Visual media to deliver the same old reportorial product of traditional newspapers and broadcast.
Finally, some are starting to see that the real and much-needed “convergence” has to be implemented on the front-end of the reportorial process. Paul Niwa, at Emerson College, has done just that with some graduate students who created bostonchinatown.org. And we are grateful to Niwa for writing a “how and why we did it” piece for the current issue of the Convergence Newsletter.
Here's Niwa's lede, but do check out the entire piece:
“Community Embraces a Converged Journalism-Sourcing Project By Paul Niwa, Emerson College Boston’s Chinatown is one of the largest and oldest Asian American neighborhoods in the country. Yet, this community of 40,000 does not even have a weekly newspaper. Coverage of the neighborhood in the city’s metropolitan dailies is also weak. In 2006, The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald mentioned Chinatown in 78 articles. Only 16 percent of the sources quoted in those articles were Asian American, indicating that newspapers relied on information from non-residents to cover the neighborhood. With all this in mind, I created the bostonchinatown.org project as an experiment to build a common sourcebook for newsrooms.”
“Community Embraces a Converged Journalism-Sourcing Project
By Paul Niwa, Emerson College
Boston’s Chinatown is one of the largest and oldest Asian American neighborhoods in the country. Yet, this community of 40,000 does not even have a weekly newspaper. Coverage of the neighborhood in the city’s metropolitan dailies is also weak. In 2006, The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald mentioned Chinatown in 78 articles. Only 16 percent of the sources quoted in those articles were Asian American, indicating that newspapers relied on information from non-residents to cover the neighborhood. With all this in mind, I created the bostonchinatown.org project as an experiment to build a common sourcebook for newsrooms.”
O'Reilly Radar delivers an interesting update on Google Earth releasing an API embedded in your browser. What this means is that you can fire-up Google Earth directly from a browser, instead of having to open GE as a separate application. We haven't checked yet, but what this will mean is the potential for another perspective tab on the Google Maps menu.
Embed Google Earth In Your Site
Posted: 28 May 2008 05:43 PM CDT
The Google Earth Plugin was just released this morning (Radar post) and there is already a handy third-party tool available. This is unsurprising considering the general buzz at Google I/O. If you want to embed a 3D Google Earth Map in your site simply follow the directions below.
Browse to the TakItWithMe.com Google Earth Embedded Map Tool Paste in a Google Earth KML link or Google Maps MyMap link if you'd like to include an overlay Click on the 'Load Preview' button. If you did not provide a KML link, you will get a warning before you continue Use the Map Navigation Controls or your mouse to set the Google Earth viewpoint you’d like to be the default for your map Click on the 'Set Center and Zoom' Button Click on the 'Generate Embed Code' Copy the resulting code and paste it into your webpage or blog where you'd like the map to appear To create another map, simply refresh the page and start again
Browse to the TakItWithMe.com Google Earth Embedded Map Tool
I am sure that embedding will be available as soon as Google integrates GE into their main site. While this is something Google hasn't committed to, I think we can assume it will happen. This release of the plugin is Windows only. Michael Jones, CTO of Google Earth, stated that Mac and Linux plugins will be available by August. I assume that Google will wait for those releases before the integration happens.
I met the developer via Frank Taylor at Google I/O. Frank actually has an embed in his post — I don't have windows on this machine so I can't test before embedding a sample on Radar.
Google Earth Escapes the Client and Comes to the Browser
Posted: 28 May 2008 02:49 PM CDT
Google's 3D data has escaped the client and is now a welcome addition to the browser! Today at Google I/O a Google Earth Browser plugin is going to be released. With the plugin installed anybody with a Windows machine will be able to view Google Earth mashups in the comfort of their own browser instead of having to pull up a separate client.
This release does not change Google Maps, the mapping site on Google's domain; it will not be serving up Google Earth imagery (yet). This release does not change all Google maps mashups into Google Earth Mashups. Instead the plugin enables developers to offer Google Earth imagery to their users very easily. I think it is notable that this is being offered to developers first. Why developers first? For one the plugin is being released at Google I/O, Google's developer conference. I think that we should expect many developer-only treats today and tomorrow. Second, mashups can really help with distribution and help gain mindshare with those who don't make it to Google's sites on their own.
As Paul Rademacher, the creator of the first mashup (Housingmaps.com) and the technical lead on the project, pointed out to me during a call last week “The goal, apart from opening up Google Earth, is to bring Earth to the user. You can't help but see Google maps when you surf now you'll also see Google Earth.” The final reason, I am sure, is to keep Google's main mapping site clean. Google Maps has had a lot of features added lately; they will need to spend some time figuring out a 3D UX.
Here are some sample apps for you to try out. You will be prompted to download the plugin:
On the call Paul and Google Earth Product Manager Peter Birch pointed out some of the technical features of the plugin. The Firefox and IE plugins enable a Javascript API, very similar to the existing Google Maps API, that enables the imagery, camera titling, new controls, and 3D models (importable from Sketchup and websites). Developers will be able to use KML to instruct the API. Mouse events are available for all features and the default behavior can be overridden. Google's Sky imagery is also available and can be accessed programatically. Developers can create an events window for their application that renders 100% full HTML for the browser you are in.
The plugin enables the latest Google Earth features (release 4.3) including “Photo-realistic buildings from cities around the world”, “Dawn to dusk views with the Sunlight feature”, ” and “Swoop navigation from outer space to street-level” (this was incredibly smooth when I tried it). Developers will be able to toggle the buildings on and off (the screenshot above has them on – wow, they rival VE's latest work, Radar post).
Using the plugin was very cool and fun. I have always enjoyed swooping around the world. I almost never fire up Google Earth unless I m specifically researching something for it. I think that I will use the client even less, but will use the Google Earth data even more. They have a packed an amazing amount of functionality into a browser plugin.
The “battle” between Google and Microsoft is closest at the mapping front. Both are spending amazing amounts of money collecting imagery and data (Radar post). Up till now Google had ceded the 3D space in the browser to Microsoft. This is a strong shot across the 3D bow. Both Virtual Earth and the GE Plugin are Windows only — right now. Mac support is coming from Google (I didn't ask about Linux, but I can't imagine that Google would exclude the developer-centric platform). Virtual Earth on the other hand was implemented with a C# plugin and has never said that they will release a version that supports Macs. As a mashup developer which 3D platform would you choose? I'll bet for most it will be the one that supports all comers. I hope the GE Plugin helps push the VE team towards supporting the Mac.
Paul Rademacher, the technical lead, will be giving a session on the Google Earth Plugin today at 3PM2PM. The session is currently entitled Map Mashups Session — are there any other coyly titled sessions? Good chance there are releases associated with them. I'll be at Moscone Center today and tomorrow. If you're at Google I/O, say hi.
Update: Paul has posted on the Google Lat-Long blog. Frank Taylor has two posts over on the Google Earth Blog.
Screenshot from the Milk Truck game. The truck is out of view on the side of Mt Everest.
Screenshot from the Maps API sample app; look at those controls; they are very well-done.
Directions Magazine reports:
Podcast: ESRI and Google Offer New Solutions for Finding and Using Geospatial Data At last week's Where 2.0 conference held in Burlingame, California, Google's John Hanke and ESRI's Jack Dangermond shared the stage to describe their updated vision for making ESRI's users' geodata and services more usable across the Web. Our editors describe the key points in this technological and business handshake and explore its implications.
Nathan, at FlowingData.com, passed along this interesting posting from the guys at Everyblock We think it hints at an interesting point of maturity in the evolution of JAGIS (i.e. Jounalism and GIS). That is, publications will want to start differentiating themselves from online and print competitors by design and look-and-feel attributes. That means NO just using Google Map mash-ups.
Rolling Out Your Own Online Maps and Graphs with HTML/CSS
Wilson Miner and Paul Smith, two co-founders of Everyblock, post tutorials and a little bit of their own experiences rolling out their own maps and creating graphs with web standards.
Paul gets into the mechanics of how you can use your own maps discussing the map stack – browser UI, tile cache, map server, and finally, the data. My favorite part though was his reasons for going with their own maps:
Ask yourself this question: why would you, as a website developer who controls all aspects of your site, from typography to layout, to color palette to photography, to UI functionality, allow a big, alien blob to be plopped down in the middle of your otherwise meticulously designed application? Think about it. You accept whatever colors, fonts, and map layers Google chooses for their map tiles. Sure, you try to rein it back in with custom markers and overlays, but at the root, the core component—the map itself—is out of your hands.
Because it's so easy to put in Google Maps instead of make your own (although it is getting a little easier), everything starts to look and feel the same and we get stuck in this Google Maps-confined interaction funk. Don't get me wrong. Google Maps does have its uses and it is a great application. I look up directions with it all the time, but we should also keep in mind that there's more to mapping than bubble markers all in the color of the Google flag.
Remember: a little bit of design goes a long way.
Wilson provides a tutorial for horizontal bar charts and sparklines with nothing but HTML and CSS. Why would you want to do this when you could use some fancy graphing API? Using Everyblock as an example, data visualization can serve as part of a navigation system as opposed to a standalone graphic:
Sometimes the visualization isn't at the center of attention.
Make sure you check out Everyblock, a site that is all about the data in your very own neighborhood, to see these maps and graphs in action.
An interesting blurb today in Directions Magazine. It had asked readers:
Final results of the current poll (85 respondents) show that even mapophiles prefer a text front page for news. The poll asked, “How often do you use mapping interfaces to the news, such as Google Earth's new layer of New York Times stories or MetaCarta's GeoSearch News?”
Significance? We're not sure, but it might help comprehension if there were more thumbnail maps “printed” with many stories.
Nathan at FlowingData sends this along….
H. G. Wells on Quantitative Thinking
Posted: 11 Apr 2008 03:32 AM CDT
H.G. Wells, Mankind in the Making, 1904
We have long been fans — and users — of the research tutorials created by the good folks in the UC Berkeley library. This item below from The Scout Report reminds me of that work and why I like it so much. You, too, might find it a helpful link for your training efforts.
UC Berkeley Library's Congressional Research Tutorials [Macromedia Flash Player] http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/wikis/congresearch/ Making a clear and direct path through the vast amount of Congressional materials can be quite a chore, even for the most seasoned and experienced researcher. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley Library has created these fine Congressional tutorials. Designed to help users locate materials both online and in the library, these tutorials are in the form of short Flash-enabled videos. Most of the tutorials last about two minutes, and they include “Find a Bill”, “How Do I Contact My Representative?”, “Find Congressional Debate”, and “Find a Hearing”. After viewing one (or more) of these tutorials, users can also make their way to the “What's going on in Congress right now?” area to stay on top of the various activities of this important legislative body. [KMG]
http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/wikis/congresearch/
Making a clear and direct path through the vast amount of Congressional materials can be quite a chore, even for the most seasoned and experienced researcher. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley Library has created these fine Congressional tutorials. Designed to help users locate materials both online and in the library, these tutorials are in the form of short Flash-enabled videos. Most of the tutorials last about two minutes, and they include “Find a Bill”, “How Do I Contact My Representative?”, “Find Congressional Debate”, and “Find a Hearing”. After viewing one (or more) of these tutorials, users can also make their way to the “What's going on in Congress right now?” area to stay on top of the various activities of this important legislative body. [KMG]
