Links, Again
Another post about the links (yes, I know, boring). The links page is finally organized. Well, organized enough to live with.
I want to point out two really nice swfs that were released in the last couple of days…
An art history color palette analyzer. I think this is really great and the kind of stuff I was looking forward to seeing with Flash 8 - by Dr. Woohoo.
And Jonathon Harris has created another great piece - phylotaxis - made for Seed Magazine, which I never heard of and enjoyed reading.
I will now stop writing about this site.
Links Page
Only a week late. The blog is really taking off. From now on please go to the LINKS page for all your Flash Data Visualization needs.
Why a new page? I was going nuts trying to figure out how to keep the links up to date. I was keeping track of them using delicious. That has a public API, so copying and pasting into Word Press seemed kind of stupid. I poked around and delicious has a handy “link roll” section in their help. It will generate the JavaScript necessary to return a list of your links. So, I added a special tag for the blog, added additional category tags, set up a few link rolls, pasted the JavaScript into WordPress, and now I can add a link by bookmarking in delicious. Nice and easy.
I still need to organize the links better. I’ve only added descriptions and ordering to the first set of tags. And I need to figure out what to do with the regular blog links. (And I need to fix that Theme which I stupidly only made look good for the home page.)
Finally, a Theme
I don’t love it - but, I can live with it. I messed around with the Blix theme and made it more plain. As I don’t know squat about CSS or PHP, it was a rather haphazard endeavor and I will probably change the colors soon. I’ve been meaning to learn some CSS and PHP so, if nothing else, it got me started. Tomorrow, I clean up the links.
Findr
I made a Flickr photo browser type thing with Flash (requires Player 8, hi-speed, 1024×768). I’m calling it Findr. It uses the Flickr public API and Kelvin Luck’s fantastic Flashr (which wraps the API for Flash).
It’s still very beta with bugs to fix and design improvements to make. But, I wanted to post something before my talk on Wednesday, so here it is. And here’s what it does…
- First, enter an initial tag.
- Findr displays a list of related tags. Then, it gets a list of photos matching the initial tag and displays photo thumbnails.
- After the initial tags and thumbs load, you can click on tags or thumbs.
- Clicking a tag will grab a list of related tags and display the intertersection of that list with the other tag list(s). After displaying the intersection list, photos that match all clicked tags are displayed.
- Clicking a thumb will load a larger version of the image and display its title, owner, and a link to its photo page.
I’ll open source the code in the next couple weeks if anyone’s interested. Just need to clean it up first.
Also - for people using Flex Builder 2.0 Alpha, this does not work with Firefox Flash Player 8.5 WIN XP. It does work with MIE 8.5 WIN XP.
Speaking at MIT - Wednesday Nov 7
OK, OK. I’m speaking to the Boston Macromedia User Group and it’s taking place at MIT. But, I’ll take what I can get. (It’s also for the MIT Design Group).
I will be giving my MAX presenation for the third time - so it should be really good.
When: Wednesday, November 9, 6:00 PM
Where: MIT, Building E51 (Tang Center), Room 151 - map
I changed the description a bit - but, same talk - Flash and Data Visualization. Outline is
- Examples of static data visualization
- Comparisons between static and dynamic (Flash examples)
- Walk through of how to develop a visualization (Flash example)
- Three more Flash examples - scenario modeling, collaborative decison making, integrated application
- Changes in technology that are affecting how we view data - Flash, Ajax, Web 2.0
- Coding - quick overview of some code that is specific to data visualization
The talk is an hour long without questions. I think we have the room for two hours.
Open to the public.
Here’s the full info:
Who: Doug Marttila
What: Flash and Data Visualization
When: Wednesday, November 9, 6:00 PM
Where: MIT, Building E51 (Tang Center), Room 151 - map
More and more data is available and being visualized everyday. The innovations of Web 2.0 are changing how we think and interact with data. But Web 2.0 has focused primarily on technologies like Ajax and RSS. These technologies are great, but can be visually limiting. Fortunately, Flash can step in where Ajax leaves off, allowing you to create anything from simple bar charts to websites that function like desktop applications.
Come see how Flash can be used to visualize data. What are its advantages and disadvantages? What are the design considerations when developing dynamic apps? And finally, how do you code this stuff?