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Even some spooks like open data

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You’ve no doubt heard of or even confronted stubborn resistance by data “owners.” Some of them can say “no” faster than Italian bureaucrats. You want what? Some of my data? This seems so pervasive that would-be data users might stand a better chance at winning the California lottery.

But as soon as you think the game’s over, there’s a surprise. This month I heard a formerly high ranking American intelligence official talk about, of all things, open data. She seemed to say that we should let our very clever people benefit us all by finding what they can in it. She also seemed to like publicly produced data, which is much cheaper than the homemade stuff.… Read the rest “Even some spooks like open data”

A mossy viz to try at home

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Visualization purists beware. This “viz” is mossy — as in moss.

At first glance, it’s a visualization. It represents parks, forests, rivers, and lakes in Berlin, Germany. But then it invites you to touch it, and the map nudges you closer to the real thing.

The mossy-viz idea seems to have begun when Sebastian Meier sought a more sensual experience than he could give with an ordinary map. Meier, who works at at the Interaction Design Lab, part of the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany, begins his explanation this way.

Most visualizations use the two-dimensional plane of paper or screens, even when visualizing spatial (three-dimensional) data.

… Read the rest “A mossy viz to try at home”