theParser

Parsing data journalism and social media streams, daily. Data: attractive, pretty, alluring, prepossessing, lovely, charming, delightful, appealing, engaging, winsome, stunning, arresting, beguiling, graceful, elegant, exquisite, aesthetic, artistic, decorative informal killer, cute, foxy Social: discover, find out, become aware, be informed, hear, hear tell, gather, understand, ascertain, establish, share informal get wind of the fact, get wise to the fact Gif by dvdp.

[theparser]

Moving on up!

So, I've been playing with Tumblr for a bit, but I ultimately need some more autonomy if I want to do this thing right. Thank you for those who followed, and stay tuned for when I launch The Parse 2.0 I've still got to play with it, however I've got the domain! Might as well play with some SCSS.

[theparser]

Nightingale + Twitter Love

Parse: Great UI, worth the free download, but needs improvement

I've been looking for a Twitter app that incorporates some analytics so I know the dispersement of content, and then I discovered Twheel: an app that visualizes up to 30 tweets at a time.

Twheel's design is loosely based of Florence Nightingale's famous Coxcomb chart. Tweets getting a lot of retweets are easily spotted, letting you discover what's trending in your feed.

The only problem is the 30 tweet limit. I'm still looking for something with a Reddit-like feature that lets me sort top tweets by the past hour, day, week, month and all time. So you can see what's immediately getting retweeted, but not necessarily which tweets are really going viral.

Aside from my own personal wishes, the UI is fantastic. It took me a minute to get used to looking at the firehose like this, but the 30 tweet limit is actually quite nice. It gave me time to really read my tweets, letting my fingers casually trace the wheel in clockwise and counterclockwise motions. I even used the app a few times to respond to some friends and colleagues. It's much easier to send direct messages over Twheel (thank god), too.

If you're interested, you can download Twheel in the Apple app store here. Currently it's only available for iPhone, but let me know if you know of any other good Twitter apps for Droid or iPhone. Which ones do you use now that Twitter has changed their API?

[theparser]

Mapping 120+ YouTube Videos of Japan's 2011 Tsunami

Parse: Mama pajama! There's gotta be a better way to do this.

TIL there's this amazing subreddit called DataIsBeautiful, and found this amazing map of over 120 tsunami videos mapped with Google.

But as it turns out, 120+ Youtube videos all embedded into the info windows, with three types of customized icons and a suggestion to open this bad boy up in Google Earth makes my computer really unhappy.

That being said, what would you use to map this so it can load quicker?

[theparser]

Billions Compared to Billions

Parse: 'Billion' is used in a lot of contexts; here's some meta-context.

What does the US deficit, Walmart's revenue and the cost of the Beijing Olympics have in common? They're all figures that number in the billions.

To help wrap your head around the various billions flying around, my favorite data artist David McCandless made this handy-dandy Billion-Dollar-o-Gram. It's about three years old now, but I still love it.

[theparser]

Sextagram: Kids Using Instagram Comments to Sext

Parse: Words > Pictures?

Does anyone else find it ironic that a photo sharing app is being used by teens for its comment section? Couldn't you just send a picture?

[theparser]

Erm, Lyke Wut Haztag Dew I Uze?

Parse: Chose your hashtags wisely to reach a larger audience.

You're sitting around, shit hits the fan, you've got to tweet it and you have no clue how to tag it. Well, thankfully, there's an app for that: #HashtagBattle. Plug in any two hashtags you're debating over, for example #election2012 or #2012election, and you'll instantly see that the former has more than 50,000 tweets using it in comparison to the latter.

Dilemma, solved. Now bang out some copy. 

[theparser]

PANDA: A Handy Newsroom App for Digging into Data

Parse: Get this and get organized or Brian Boyer, dressed as man-panda, will destroy you.

If you've read this much, I swear PANDA is as awesome as that gif.

That's because PANDA, officially in version 1.0,  lets you store tons of spreadsheets and then search through them like you were Googling it. The goal is to create one central location for everyone to really get to mining the data. There's even an option for you to share a public server, so you could just set up a big old PANDA, share the link with some determined friends/followers and let them go to town.

If you're interested in checking things out, head on over to Investigative Reporters & Editors for links on how to install and start playing with your very own PANDA. For the love of god, why won't you just play with the panda?

[theparser]

I Can Haz Social Media Clout/Klout?! (AKA K's Are Kewl)

Parse: Nice ego boost, but still needs some work.

When Klout first launched in 2009, it came under scrutiny regarding their definition and ranking of users social media influence across various platforms.

To their credit, the social media ranking application launched their new algorithm on Tuesday with lots of coverage from media like Mashable, TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal. The service will now take into account more than 400 different measurements (originally it only looked at a third of that amount) across multiple social platforms and assign you a daily social media grade from 1-100.

While I'm certainly not complaining about the 20-some-odd point jump, it seems that they're focusing more on real-world signs that you're cool like LinkedIn or if you have a Wikipedia page.

Additionally, the service will now take into account fellow Klout users giving you points, K+ in Klout terms, for various areas of expertise. Although I've had one friend in particular showering me with K+, overall it seems my score seems to be a steady decline since July. 

I'll know more and be able to really dig into the data once they open it up, but until then here's their full breakdown of the new algorithm.

[theparser]

Mmm, just sit back and enjoy David McCandless, a British data artist and author who's work has been featured in Wired, The Guardian and Die Zeit, show you how data can be beautiful. Then go to his website and play around with some of his interactives, like "Snake Oil" which visualizes the scientific evidence behind every popular health supplement.

[theparser]

Hey, No Context Data (And Poorly Thought Up Titles)!

theParse: give spending figures greater budgetary context.

Sometimes knowing the right context is easier said than done, though, like with FaceTheFactsUSA.org's recent infographic. It's kind of got a nice, unoriginal "Hunt for Red October" theme going on and a pinwheel that's with Chrome icon's color palate, but the common statistical sense is really what's lacking here.

Let's say I tell you that I spend $1000 on drinks at the bar last week. Most of my friends, being lightweights, spent $50. There was one guy who dropped $100, but still I spent the most money on booze.

Sounds pretty like I'm an alcoholic, unless I told you how much money each of us made over time and then compared that to how much we spend on booze. I could just make a lot (I don't) and pop bottles of Kristal all day (I do).

The same basic idea applies here. The US spends a significant amount of money, however when we compare that to its GDP, roughly how much a country earns, then countries like Myanmar (which has been under military rule since 1961) float to the surface.

For more on better contextualizing data, check out David McCandless: a data artist who's work has been in The Guardian, Wired and Die Zeit.

[theparser]

WTF Is This!?

(Note: if you don't have Google Chrome...just go get it because that's the only way you can see this thing. Kinda sucks; I know. If you don't have a good internet connection, I'll try and describe this thing as best I can. Additionally, these are only government-authorized small arms and ammunitions trades; no hasty generalizations, mkay.)

theParse: visualizations need a clean, clear story

Google Ideas came out with this jaw-dropping interactive depicting the global arms trade  the other day, but it seems to have left some data journos wanting more.

Great browser spectacle, but poor storytelling: Global arms trade visualised workshop.chromeexperiments.com/projects/armsg… #ddj #dataviz

— Sascha Venohr (@venohr) August 6, 2012

So, with Venohr's tweet in mind, I decided to take a minute to really rip into this interactive and see what kind of stories I could tell. First off, it's really freaking gorgeous. Using Google Earth to provide a clean zoomable globe for a base, pulsating neon webs arraying out from the countries you highlight tracing the paths of trade.

The brightest one by far, though, was the US. It looks like America went to a weapons trading rave rolling and handed out free samples to the all of its friends. But when you s

tart toggling the checks at the lower right hand corner, another picture becomes clear.

Since 2001, the United States has actually been running a growing weapons trade deficit, importing billions more than it exports to the rest of the world. Weird, right? What could be more American than guns? In fact, imported weapons and ammo hit its peak in 2009, with countries like Brazil, Austria and Italy exporting 40% of the total importations, predominantly civilian weapons and ammo. This deficit grew the most during the Bush administration but later began to fall under President Obama in 2010. 

Next stop for me was one of the United States' closest allies, and unsurprisingly you'll see that Israel has always been a strong importer of American arms, maxing out with $170 million worth of military weapons in 1996. Reasons for this particular year are still unclear, though so feel free to submit your hypothesis.

Going from Israel, I moved down to the The Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, and noticed a 4296.7% increase in importations in 1998, the year that the Second Congo War errupted. The war, labeled one of the deadliest since WWII, was ignited after tensions flared between the newly renamed country and Rawandas groups over disputed eastern territory.

In total, the DRC imported $19 million dollars worth of military weapons and munitions that year from only one country, China. While Sino-Congolese relationships stretch back to the Cold War, the map provides a new take on the bloody conflict.

Well that's it for now. Hope this was insightful and again please feel free to let me know if you find any other cool facets of this interactive or any others.