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Open Data Hack Day

By
njgriffiths
– December 7, 2011Posted in: Data, Misc, Visualization

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Last Saturday was Open Data Day & I went to the event here in Vancouver where I was lucky enough to get my hands on some pretty interesting data, courtesy of David Eaves. Five years of bike accident data sourced from the provincial insurer her in BC.


The data wasn’t very detailed – just month/year & lat/lons but there was enough there to be able to slap together a quick viz in geocommons mapping out all the accidents in Vancouver between 2006-2010. Each dot represents an accident, colour-coded by year.


The five-year totals were aggregated under local election-riding boundaries (which isn’t necessarily the most valuable marker but was certainly the quickest to pull down!) and made into a heatmap layer. We added another layer with all Vancouver’s bike routes.


As a viz, not great, but it wasn’t bad for a day that involved delicious food courtesy of Food Tree & chat with the provincial MLA responsible for open data. The bike accident data – perhaps unsurprisingly for Vancouver – was a popular item & it was a lot of fun to hack around with lots of interesting people to see what we could make of the data.


I think there’s a fair bit more to be done with the data & I’m looking forward to working more with it – including trying to get more detailed data out of ICBC!


 



			
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BBC: World at 7 Billion
By 
mradmin
 – November 1, 2011Posted in: Data, Visualization
			
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BBC: World at 7 Billion
Screenshot of the interactive from the BBC's 'The World at 7 Billion'


 


The World at 7 Billion is an interesting multiformat news package from the BBC covering global population demographics. It contains a long-form article, an interactive and several videos all linked with simple, tabbed interface.


The large-format style of the UI – particularly the interactive – make the package very approachable and engaging. There is something that is infinitely more appealing about clicking on a large, accessible ‘NEXT’ button instead of trying to hover over some tiny text in the bottom corner of the screen.


The package does a good job of using the interactive to connect readers to the stories, too. By taking a few pieces of personal information (birth date, country, sex) the interactive allows users to actively situate themselves within the narrative. Hopefully thisshould increase engagement to stories that might otherwise be seen as difficult to connect to.


(I have always found large-scale, demographic narratives to be somewhat overwhelming. Sort of a ‘hand of god’ feeling, ingrained with of a sense of the inevitable.)


 


 


 



			
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Reporters Sans Frontiers, Press Freedom Index 2010
By 
njgriffiths
 – September 17, 2011Posted in: Corruption, Featured, Visualization
			
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RSF Press Freedom Index
RSF Press Freedom Index Heatmap 2010


I’d been looking to find a good project to experiment with the Polymaps mapping library for some time before I hit on the annual Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Sans Frontiers. The index was perfect for experimenting, since it was a small data set, readily available & didn’t require any cleaning, just a bit of formatting. Quick & easy – perfect for focusing on Polymaps & not getting bogged down in data.


Reporters Sans Frontiers has been producing the ‘Press Freedom Index’ (PFI) since 2002. According to their press release, the index “measures the violations of press freedom in the world.”


Click here for the map


RSF sends questionnaires “to its network of 140 correspondents around the world, and to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists” in an attempt to gauge levels of press freedom around the globe. RSF produces a report and ranking table, as well as a PDF map based on their findings of for the year.


The data is perfect for a heatmap, which is infinitely more aesthetically pleasing than a table (plus it gives you a chance to brush up on your geography a bit). Shading was based on country scores in the index and I was able to include the country ranking in tooltip that appears on mouseover. Double-clicking the country opens the RSF country page, giving you access to RSF’s country profiles.


Next steps: I’d like to add a brief country synopsis within the tooltip, so that you can view a quick snapshot of events that impacted a country’s ranking. I would also like to add the ability to view heatmaps of rankings from previous years, probably via a drop-down menu of some sort. A full-screen button would be nice too


Note: Best viewed in anything but IE. The map doesn’t work at all in IE7 or below (& likely never will). Haven’t yet tested in IE8 or above.



			
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JMSC iPhone App Out Now!
By 
mradmin
 – September 16, 2011Posted in: Featured, Misc, News, Technology
			
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JMSC iPhone AppThe iPhone RSS app that I put together for the Journalism and Media Studies Center at HKU (my alma mater) is finally available in the iTunes Store.


The app pulls in a number of RSS feeds put out by the JMSC, including news, events, guest speakers & of course, information for current JMSC students. It was built using the Taplynx iPhone framework. 


I had the idea after reading a post on the Nieman Journalism Lab about how they built their iPhone app. After a bit of background reading & playing around a bit with the framework, I was convinced I could put something similar together.


Find out more about the app or just go download it.


App Store Badge



			
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Mahir Yavuz’s Sense of Patterns
By 
njgriffiths
 – September 12, 2011Posted in: Misc, Visualization
			
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Sense of PatternsMahir Yavuz has created a number of data visualizations based on people’s movements in public spaces. So far he has created a series of prints and a video animation based on taxi trips around Vienna and its suburbs.


Fascinating look at the public use of space, although “One Day of Taxis” is by far the most striking (see image inset). Full info on the project can be found at casualdata.com.


I have embedded “One Day of Taxis” using visualizing.org’s Visualizing Player below, although the player is sometimes a bit glitchy (as in it doesn’t appear!). If the player doesn’t appear below, you can get there here.





			
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Canadian ISPs & Consumer Complaints
By 
njgriffiths
 – August 14, 2011Posted in: Data, Featured, Internet, Technology, Visualization
			
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Early last month, Michael Geist, a Canadian law professor, published a list of consumer complaints filed against Canadian ISPs with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CTRC), the regulatory body whose mandate is “to ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public.”


The CRTC does not publicly disclosed details on net neutrality complaints and investigations, but Geist filed an Access to Information request to gain access to the information, dating back to late 2009. The documents showed that virtually all major Canadian ISPs have been the target of complaints. Despite this, the CRTC has only acted to enforce regulations in a fraction of the complaints brought before them.







        
        


 



        
        


 



 


Looking at the graphs, two things immediately become apparent: there are a huge number of net neutrality complaints (nearly 60% of all registered complaints) and the CRTC doesn’t seems too keen on flexing its regulatory muscle. The CRTC only stepped in to enforce regulations three times – less than 10% of all cases brought before it.


Mouse over the graphs for more detail. The table below contains all the documentation posted on Geist’s site. The table can be filtered by keyword or you can sort it by clicking on the table header.


Much thanks to Michael Geist for his tireless efforts keeping Canada’s Internet open!




 








Complaints Registered with the CRTC 2009-2011




Filter:





 







ISP
Date
CRTC Number
Complaint
Resolution




  



Rogers
February 2011
514192
Throttling of World of Warcraft online game. Leads to regular disconnection.
Denied. Rogers says throttling practices have no effect on online gaming (later reverse)




Rogers
May 2011
534293
Degrading Skype, Net2Phone
Ongoing




Bell
December 2009
475593
Bell throttling access to MediaMonkey.com
Denied. CRTC says Bell’s disclosure page does not reference site, so problem may lie with the site itself.




Bell
May 2011
526400
Throttling applications even when no network congestion. (TekSavvy is also named in the complaint.)
Denied. Burden on the complainant to provide evidence. No evidence provided of specific apps or length of time affected.




Barrett Xplore
January 2010
8646-C12-2008154000
ExaTEL complains Barrett Xplore throttling renders Internet telephony unusable, creating an unfair advantage for its own voice telephone service. Traffic management policies not fully disclosed.
CRTC rules not an undue preference since Barrett Xplore runs voice traffic on a separate circuit. Further rules that throttling violates rules for degrating time sensitive traffic and requires change to policy or application for CRTC approval. Barrett Xplore changes traffic management approach. CRTC also rules that dislosure insufficient. Barrett Xplore non-responsive until May 2011, when CRTC threatens to take the issue to a public proceeding.




Rogers
March 2010
486625
Throttling affecting corporate VPN connection
Rogers policy says it does not affect VPN. Contact Rogers. If unsatisfied and you have evidence of rule violation, provide evidence for further consideration.




Cogeco
March 2010
482415
Traffic management policy involves throttling 24/7
Denied. CRTC asks complainant for more evidence of policy and harm.




Bell
July 2010
496316
Traffic management policy overbroad
Denied.




Rogers
March 2011
522253
Throttling of World of Warcraft online game. Leads to regular disconnection.
Admits problem and promises to fix.




Bruce Street Technologies
July 2010
496016
Throttling traffic without disclosure.
Admits throttling for brief period without disclosure. Subsequently dropped throttling practices.




Rogers
August 2010
496562
Claim throttling speeds on xBox usage
Rogers denies the claim.




Wind Mobile
August 2010
496185
Speed slowed after 5 GB of usage on all Internet traffic. Lack of disclosure on Fair Use Policy.
CRTC says slowing usage of any time sensitive traffic would be a violation of ITMP rules or require CRTC approval. Says disclosure inadequate.




Wind Mobile
September 2010
494833
Port blocking restricts some uses and not properly disclosed.
CRTC says disclosure inadequate. Agrees to amend disclosure page.




Rogers
February 2011
505052
Disclosure of throttling practices inadequate as effect of upload throttling not fully discussed
Agrees to amend disclosure page




Telco Quadro Communications
October 2010
502906
Change in traffic management practices.
Denied. Practices ruled consistent with net neutrality guidelines.




Bell
November 2010
504432
Throttling speeds for downloads from hotfile.com
Admits error. Deep packet inspection technology mistakenly treating downloads as peer-to-peer traffic.  Promises to fix, but denies any violation of CRTC rules.




Barrett Xplore
February 2011
512810
Traffic management dramatic effect on services.
Denied. No evidence of violation.




Rogers
February 2011
514192
Throttling renders service useless.
Denied. Company provides disclosure and no evidence of non-compliant policies.




Shaw
December 2009
475351
Blocking Skype users from accessing BC numbers.
Require Shaw account information before proceeding.




Barrett Xplore
June 2010
494139
Bad service with slow speeds
Outside the scope of ITMP policy.




Rogers
July 2010
494836
Problems with SIP (session initiation protocol) on Port 5060.
Admits problem but argues it is not a traffic management issue.




Rogers
February 2011
503207
Disclosure of throttling practices inadequate as effect of upload throttling not fully discussed
Agrees to amend disclosure page




Rogers
December 2010
505777
Rogers customer service providing conflicting information about throttling practices
Acknowledges incorrect information provided by one representative.




Uniserve
January 2011
510718
Traffic shaping hurts some applications. Flash video very slow.
Agrees to amend disclosure page.




Rogers
February 2011
510987
Disclosure of throttling practices inadequate as effect of upload throttling not fully discussed
Agrees to amend disclosure page




Rogers
February 2011
511366
Disclosure of throttling practices inadequate as effect of upload throttling not fully discussed
Agrees to amend disclosure page




Rogers
April 2011
517209
Throttling of World of Warcraft online game. Leads to regular disconnection.
Admits problem and promises to fix.




Rogers
March 2011
517209
Throttling of World of Warcraft online game. Leads to regular disconnection.
Admits problem and promises to fix.  “Problem is not due to a Rogers’ policy but rather due to a software problem which we will fix as soon as possible”




Telus
March 2011
527577
General throttling concerns.
Telus works with customer to address speed problems.




Videotron
May 2011
528197
Calculation of bandwidth usage. Monthly usage not charged fairly.
Denied. No regulation of retail services. Referred to CCTS.




Bell
March 2011
529146
Limiting HTTP upload rates and limiting upload on port 55145.
Unknown




Rogers
March 2011
529411
Advertising of Speed Boost inconsistent with World of Warcraft throttling.
Denied. Marketing outside of policy. No evidence of violation provided.




Rogers
May 2011
529619
Throttling of peer-to-peer applications.
Denied. Rogers discloses this practice.




Rogers
April 2011
530230
Throttling of World of Warcraft online game. Leads to regular disconnection.
Admits problem and promises to fix.




Shaw
May 2011
533015
Inability to see monthly Internet usage
Shaw deactivated feature when it dropped usage based billing.




Shaw
June 2011
538009
Intercepting failed domain name requests and redirecting to company pages
Ongoing








 


Source: michaelgeist.ca



			
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Voice of the Vulnerable Challenge Winner
By 
njgriffiths
 – August 10, 2011Posted in: Data, News, Visualization
			
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This was the winning entry to the  the Voice of the Vulnerable Challenge, a project organized by UN Global Pulse in partnership with Visualizing.org that was looking foor unique ways to present data collected from a mobile phone survey conducted by UN Global Pulse last year.


Note:This doesn’t always work properly if you’re using Chrome (it doesn’t for me, at least). It’s worth checking out though & it runs fine in Safari & Firefox. 


From the UN Global Pulse website:


Last year, UN Global Pulse launched a large-scale mobile phone based survey to ask people from five countries in different regions of the world how they are dealing with the effects of the global economic crisis. Using the data generated by this survey, Visualizing.org and UN Global Pulse challenged you to visualize the voices of vulnerable populations in times of global crisis. We were thrilled by the more than twenty projects submitted to this challenge. It was a very strong set of projects that help answer these questions: How do people in different nations describe their quality of life? What types of changes do people make in order to cope with economic uncertainty? How do individuals perceive their future outlook?



			
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New Home!!!
By 
njgriffiths
 – August 9, 2011Posted in: Misc, News
			
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Pixel HomeFinally got around to moving off of wordpress.com & onto a proper hosted server where I can run whatever scripts I need to. The ICANN post runs in-site now, just like it was supposed to. Expect to see a lot more interactive goodness on these pages from not on (& regular updates, too).


Since I was moving the site, it seemed as good as time as any to change around the look a bit too. Changes will most likely be ongoing (I think I’d prefer a black background) so don’t be surprised if things keep changing for a while!



					

				

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ICANN & the Naming of the Internet
By 
njgriffiths
 – June 30, 2011Posted in: Data, Featured, News, Policy, Technology, Visualization
			
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ICANN’s recent decision to open up the rules governing Internet domain names garnered it quite a bit of media attention in the last week or so. Since there has been a fair bit of speculation as to what the new rules could mean, it seemed appropriate to take a quick snapshot of how the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) looks now.


This graphic shows the approximate number of ‘top-level’ domain names registered in each country (as a percent of all registered domains). Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) have traditionally been restricted to well-known .com, .org, .net, .biz and .info suffixes – although there are currently 22 officially recognized gTLDs, including a number of sponsored or restricted use domains such as .edu, .gov or .mil. Only the five well-known domains are included in the above graphic.


The effect of the US’s historical role in developing and managing the Internet can be seen pretty clearly, with just over 32% of gTLDs being registered in the US. That’s down from about 40% a few years ago, however.


Last week ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)  approved a plan to increase the number of domain name suffixes and to allow virtually any word to be registered as a domain (.canon, .ipad, .sport, etc). The cost of registering a new domain name will be $185,000 and there will be an annual fee of $25,000, both of which will be payable to ICANN.


Perhaps more significantly – at least in the long run – was the decision to allow characters from any language, including Cyrillic, Arabic and Chinese, in a domain name. With the rapid rise of Internet users reading and writing in languages that don’t use the roman alphabet, ICANN appears to be referencing the growing influence of Internet users around the globe who are arguably underserved by the Internet’s current naming system.


Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and CEO, said that the changes approved by the board “have opened the door to an era of creative innovation unlike any other since the Internet’s inception.”


Critics have argued that the changes could introduce unneeded complexity and are likely to have little widespread appeal beyond a handful of global corporations looking to enhance their brands.


ICANN was established as a non-profit in 1998 and is responsible for the management and oversight of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). The organization was created in response to suggestions by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC), who had previously held much of the responsibility for the management of the domain name system, alongside the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a variety of volunteers and contractors that were paid by the U.S. government.


Shortly after ICANN was formed, the DoC granted it authority over the Internet’s domain name management on a temporary, but renewable, basis.



			
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WSJ Launches ‘SafeHouse’
By 
njgriffiths
 – May 7, 2011Posted in: Data, News, Security
			
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Image courtesy WSJ from wsjsafehouse.com


The Wall Street Journal yesterday announced the launch of ‘SafeHouse‘ their proprietary, in-house document submission portal, modelled after Wikileaks, it would appear.


WSJ offers the following explanation of Safehouse:




Documents and databases: They’re key to modern journalism. But they’re almost always hidden behind locked doors, especially when they detail wrongdoing such as fraud, abuse, pollution, insider trading, and other harms. That’s why we need your help.


If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service.


Unlike WikiLeaks, however, SafeHouse doesn’t guarantee the anonymity of their sources, as acknowledged in their Terms of Service:




You understand that regardless of the method of submission, we are unable to ensure the complete confidentiality or anonymity of anything you send to us. As a result, please use discretion in contacting us and providing us with information. You use this service at your own risk.





Compare this to the submission guidelines from WikiLeaks:




Wikileaks does not record any source-identifying information and there are a number of mechanisms in place to protect even the most sensitive submitted documents from being sourced. We do not keep any logs. We can not comply with requests for information on sources because we simply do not have the information to begin with. Similarly we can not see your real identity in any anonymised chat sessions with us. Our only knowledge of you as a source is if you provide a coded name to us. A lot of careful thought by world experts in security technologies has gone into the design of these systems to provide the maximum protection to you. Wikileaks has never revealed a source.




Or the sumission guidelines from Al Jazeera’s Transparency Unit, a secure content submission portal:




We recognize that – despite the best technology – our readers and viewers are taking a risk by submitting materials, particularly those living in countries where such disclosures are not protected by law. Our journalists will ensure that the identities of our sources are protected, and that submissions are scrubbed of sensitive information – like the “metadata” that contains authoring information – before those submissions are released to the public.




This is not to suggest that submission portals to major media outlets don’t have their place – obviously, it is critical that they provide as many options as possible for data collection. Now more than ever, data is the bread and butter of news media. From the perspective of a potential ‘leak,’ however, there are some significant differences between the offerings on hand from Al Jazeera or the WSJ and what a service like WikiLeaks delivers. 


While WikiLeaks copycats have sprung from the woodwork (see here for a partial list), I believe that Al Jazeera and the WSJ are the only major media outlets to have launched dedicated, WikiLeaks-style submission portals for the public (please feel free to correct me on this!).



			
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