Thursday, 2 September 2010

Beauty and the Data - Data as a dense forest that needs mapping out

After having seen one of the latest TED Talks videos on data visualisation from David McCandless, I've noticed a trend from Twitter and Mashable toward this type of thinking. This I find interesting from a psychological perspective because it demonstrates the power of visual stimuli to the mind. I don't think anyone would deny the usefulness of a map when lost. Data can be vast swathes of forest, and easily permits confusion. A map is bound to help. Right?




Take the WikiLeaks visualisations. A standard map with satellite imagery showing the locations of every incident in Afghanistan has been produced. What emerges before you've even formed a single word in your mind, are the clusters of dots, where a clear concentration of events has occurred.



I can predict there being more of a role in the future for visualising all that interesting data, especially on maps but also using other designs. Live visualisations of real-time web data, but with an emphasis on clean, minimal design and intuitive controls would mean anyone could assemble a meaningful data map.

I plan to take what David McCandless does but to offer a new approach, namely to offer the user the ability to create data visualisations on an ad-hoc (or near ad-hoc) basis, with various data sources etc.

The idea is then to create a user interface for data visualisations, preferably a web interface. Also necessary would be access to each of the major web APIs (say the top ten web services). I would need to find a way to map between these interfaces in a meaningful way, to allow users to generate meaningful outcomes.

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This may take some time. About a year. But that's exactly what I have in studying Computer Science MSc. I look forward to talking about it with the experts that will be teaching us.



Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Can you copyright software ideas?

After delving deep into the fundamentals of computing you begin to realise that many of the prejudices people have about Operating Systems are completely pointless.

This is because when it comes down to it, all OS types are fundamentally built using the same stuff. All the hype about whether Mac is better, or Windows, is completely misguided.

What many people don't realise is that far from being arch rivals, Apple and Microsoft have been in bed together since the late 80s. Mac pioneered a lot of the 'windowing' system we're all used to on desktop PCs nowadays. The two companies battled it out in courts after Apple accused MS of stealing their ideas.

Although this may have been the case, it proved a landmark decision for courts regarding copyright and software. The bedrock of this landmark is: you can't copyright an *idea* only the technology that supports it. So MS took an idea and built their own technology to support it. The court saw this and Apple did not win (they later settled).

Although Apple is 'prettier' than Windows (IMO), the fundamentals of Unix, Windows and Apple are all the same, especially as Apple is *just* another flavour of Unix. They were all designed to support the Personal Computer (as well as other types of computers). Any prejudices about OS are somewhat pointless, although we all have a favourite flavour.