Next Level Data Analysis: The New York Times' Cascade: Data Visualization for Tweets [VIDEO]

Description from mashable.com:

"The research and development department of The New York Times has recently been pondering the life cycle of the paper’s news stories in social media — specifically, on Twitter. Cascade is a project that visually represents what happens when readers tweet about articles.

Even now, however, Cascade is more than just a nifty data visualization. Some journalists think it also gives us new ways of to think about and optimize for sharing and engagement on the social web, especially since it helps identify the most influential sharers, the more shareable terms, and more.

Its creators write on the project’s website that Cascade “links browsing behavior on a site to sharing activity to construct a detailed picture of how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared.”

Detroit, Louisiana...interesting times: The word is getting out: Arts can help cities climb back | The Courier-Journal |

Earlier this month, Detroit held the Art X Detroit festival, with help from the Kresge Foundation, featuring local visual artists, writers and performers. Soon after the festival closed, the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, an entity created by business leaders to generate innovation and business growth, played host to a two-day conference called “Rust Belt to Artist Belt” with a mix of speakers — entrepreneurs, educators, policy researchers and artists.

Many artists and creative entrepreneurs in that city regard the arts as a tool. A couple profiled by the Detroit Free Press are developing a venue near midtown to showcase a range of progressive music, along with a gallery, a cafe and retail shops.

read the full article on courier-journal.com

Most Useful Post! Grazie to Alex Levinson: 3 Major Issues with the Latest iPhone Tracking “Discovery”

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Read the full post for Alex Levinson's analysis of the legal context & implications of Apple's data tracking:

"1) Apple is not collecting this data.

And to suggest otherwise is completely misrepresenting Apple. I quote:

Apple is gathering this data, but it’s clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations.

Apple is not harvesting this data from your device. This is data on the device that you as the customer purchased and unless they can show concrete evidence supporting this claim – network traffic analysis of connections to Apple servers – I rebut this claim in full. Through my research in this field and all traffic analysis I have performed, not once have I seen this data traverse a network. As rich of data as this might be, it’s actually illegal under California state law:

(a) No person or entity in this state shall use an electronic tracking device to determine the location or movement of a person.

I don’t think that’s a legal battle Apple wants to face considering the sale of over 100 million iDevices worldwide. That raises the question – how is this data used? It’s used all the time by software running on the phone. Built-In applications such as Maps and Camera use this geolocational data to operate. Apple provides an API for access to location awareness called Core Location. Here is Apple’s description of this softare library:

The Core Location framework lets you determine the current location or heading associated with a device. The framework uses the available hardware to determine the user’s position and heading. You use the classes and protocols in this framework to configure and schedule the delivery of location and heading events. You can also use it to define geographic regions and monitor when the user crosses the boundaries of those regions.

Seems pretty clear. So now the question becomes why did this “hidden” file secretly appear in iOS 4?..."

Seriously? DirecTV plans $30 Premium VOD charge for films 8 weeks post release. Really? Piracy AHOY!

THEATER OWNERS VS. PREMIUM VOD VS. NETFLIX

Movies and television may be media’s most volatile business arenas, with battles opening up on a variety of fronts.

Theaters owners and studios are inching toward open war as D-Day nears for Thursday's DirecTV launch of premium VOD -- Hollywood’s daring move at last to reconfigure release windows by making current movies available sooner for home viewing.

Through DirecTV’s looming “Home Premium,” Sony, Time Warner's Warner Bros., Comcast-controlled Universal and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox are aiming to accelerate movies to home screens eight weeks from theatrical release -- shrunken from an average of 12 -- at $30 per VOD rental.

Also read: Theater Owners Ready to Retaliate Over Premium VOD

Worried that moviegoers might skip the megaplex for the home couch, some top circuits reportedly are privately considering retaliation, including killing movie previews and lobby posters of upcoming movies as well as other financial counterattacks.

Read Johnnie L. Roberts' excellent, long & detailed post on thewrap.com

http://bit.ly/gOXzGj

MondoWindow challenging bloated $6 billion in-flight entertainment industry - turns plane into a 'geobrowser'

About MondoWindow

MondoWindow Team | Press/Media

MondoWindow provides web based, in-flight, location-aware content and entertainment to wifi-connected airline passengers. MondoWindow is a map that tells you where you are and what you’re looking at as you fly; it turns the plane into a geobrowser, availing the passenger of points of interest, audio, video, games, and social interaction from partners in the top tier of each respective content area.

History

The company was founded by Tyler Sterkel, a technologist and museum curator, and Greg Dicum, an interactive producer and journalist. The concept grew out of Greg’s Window Seat books, a series that helped airline passengers understand the landscape beneath them.

MondoWindow is the first product for the wifi-connected airline passenger. As such, it leads the disruptive charge in the $6 billion in-flight entertainment (IFE) industry—an inefficient, bloated sector that is the last major consumer media space still largely untransformed by the Internet.

Current Status

MondoWindow launched a beta at South by Southwest in March 2011. The core technology, for which a provisional patent application has been filed, was developed by Stamen Design. At present, MondoWindow is developing key partnerships while continuing on its product development roadmap. The goal is to launch a revised beta version to the general public in time for the start of the summer travel season.

Gorgeous Pics! Step Into the Light: An Interview With Radiohead’s Stage Designer Andi Watson — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers

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Excerpt from the interview:

"When you start conceptualizing a set, do you always start the same way? If so, what is your realization process like?

My design process always starts with listening to the music over and over and over again until it is in my head to the point where following songs becomes an almost subconscious task. That way I can concentrate on the dynamics, the feel and the emotion of the music and the lyrics. At the same time I always have a meeting with the artists themselves to discuss how they want to be perceived and to determine if there is any particular aesthetic that they are interested in. I see my primary role as creating an environment for the band’s live performance and that is determined but a combination of physical objects (lights, trusses, video screens, risers, complex sets, etc) and soft components such as video content, lighting programming, etc. To envisage that… I keep listening to the music and literally imagine the combination of elements necessary to create that onstage world. I then move on to drawing sketches and finally building models using a 3D design package on my computer. By the time I send out drawings to the band/management for approval the design is usually fairly complete in my head in terms of physical structure. Obviously the system then has to be programmed, content has to be created and the environment brought to life...."

Read more: Step Into the Light: An Interview With Radiohead’s Stage Designer Andi Watson — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers