Unstructured Visualization

It may very well say something about me that one of my favorite books is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward R. Tufte, which is an (in my opinion) absolutely fascinating discussion of the right way and the wrong way to create visualizations of raw data.

The visualization of data is a bridge between the world of raw information and our minds. It's a kind of map for the mind and a good one can bring that information to life in a way that simple numbers and statistics can not.


Consider Minard's map of Napolean's march to Russia. The width of the lines indicates the size of Napolean's forces. Look at the way it shrinks and note the temperature scale on the bottom. You can practically feel the frostbitten bleeding of his troops.

The internet has created new challenges to visualizing data but it's also given up new tools. Here is a collection of some of the most ambitious and innovative attempts to visualize data. My feeling is that some are better than others and that a number of them seem to actively get in the way but all of them are very creative and fascinating.

Grand Central

I'm on the beta for GrandCentral.com, which is a Google-owned business that has a service where they give you a central phone number which can then dial multiple phones (i.e. work, cell, home, etc) according to various criteria (family, friends, etc) and which also has an online voice mail system.

I have up to ten invites that I can hand out to the beta. If you are interested in checking it out, email me a request and I'll send you an invite.

First come, first serve.

Evil Empires

It is said that revolutions against tyranny invariably reproduce the tyranny they seek to overthrow. It is obvious that Google is striving to topple the Evil Empire of Microsoft. Many have rallied to them because of their "Don't be evil" mission-statement. Their recent entry into the censor-licious Chinese market has put some strain on that claim, and Bill Gate's recent charity work (in the form of the Bill and Melinda Gate's Foundation) has led others to question whether Microsoft is genuinely evil... or more like an innocent man-child rapacious appetites aren't really his fault at all.

That said, I'm a willing minion for the Google empire, if only because my overlords have much cooler toys than those other overlords.

The latest bit of candy that's being dangled before my bedazzled eyes are two online utilities that I've been wanting for years... an online spreadsheet and an online word processor.

Google Spreadsheet is a fully functional spreadsheet that has a look and feel that should be familiar to anyone who's every used Excel. It had a feature set that should satisfy everyone short of the most advanced power users, and you can easily share your work with others, if you so choose.

Writely was originally a third party online word processor. Google has recently bought them (much like they bought Blogger), but haven't quite folded them into the main Google label (again, like Blogger). Again, the product is a fully functional Word processor with a look and feel that should be intuitive to anyone that's used Word or any of the other major word processors out there (which would be... um, Word), and, again, you can easily share documents for mutual editing.

The single strongest feature of either product is that you can save and open Microsoft documents (as well as PDFs and other common filetypes), meaning that if you use Writely, for instance, you aren't isolating yourself from any collegues or businesses that prefer Word documents. Given that much of the Microsoft dominance of the market has been the fact that it's already dominant, this goes a long way towards providing a viable alternative.

Before I get flooded with dozens of irate letters from Linux users, I am aware that the open-source market has also had viable alternatives for Office products that allow for the same sort of cross-communication; however, in the majority of those cases, you have to install a new operating system on your machine (as well as new software) in order to use them... an act that's beyond that skill-set or comfort level of the ordinary user. Clicking on a link and being able to compose a letter than your boss will be able to read, on the other hand, is piece of cake. The fact that you don't have to install Office on your home laptop in order to do work is also a tremendous benefit -- so long as you have web access (and who doesn't, these days?). Likewise... and let's be honest here... the Google name, itself, gives people confidence. The average person has never heard of Red Hat, but everyone has heard of Google.

Will this finally break the MS stranglehold on these markets? Who can say. I know that Microsoft is taking a very serious look at them while Google is coyly saying that these utilities are merely ment to supplement the existing products and that, anyway, online collaboration is wholly different market (and that they have some Floridian swampland to sell to anyone who believes that). Meanwhile, Microsoft's lawyers are sharpening their canines. Time will, of course, tell.

A Little Too Good to be True

I received the following bit of email floatsam recently:

German Parking Garage

This is pretty amazing! Can you imagine how all this operates? How do they lock each car in its cubicle for safety. WHO CARES. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND COULD GET IN THERE.

Talk about German efficiency! The two photos below were taken at a new parking garage in Munich. The actual space that the facility occupies is approximately only 20% of a comparable facility with the traditional design that is used primarily in the US. Not only is the German structure less expensive to build, but vehicles are also "retrieved" in less time and without the potential of being damaged by an attendant.

The email was accompanied by these two rather amazing photos.

I thought that this was a rather cool idea, not least because I had a similar idea a while ago. Of course, I wanted to pass this along, but I wanted to see if I could find a quicktime version of these pictures so that you could all see the thing in action.

It's good that I did. When I did my search, the first page to come up with was Snopes, which is a site that debunks Urban Legends. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Were these just photoshops? Fortunately, it's not quite that bad. The pictures are real, but it isn't a garage. It's a Volkswagan storage facility for new cars in Wolfsberg, Germany.

The real story is actually pretty cool. The Wolfberg facility is kind of a cross between a dealership and a theme park (with shops, cinemas, restaurants, and various attractions). When you take possession of your new car, it's fetched from the tower.

So, instead of a story about German efficiency, it's a story about German whimsy. How often do you come across one of those?

A Wonderful Internet

I hope that you shall enjoy the cautionary tale of It's a Wonderful Internet. Be sure to play with all the knobs and pull-outs.

PSA: Pump and Dump Stock Trading

Lately I've been getting a lot of spam with unsolicited hot stock tips. According to a recent AP article, similar messages are getting sent out via text messaging to cell phones and IM accounts.

These are all a type of scam known as "pump and dump" trading. What the scammers do is they buy up a bunch of low valued stock, then they spam out messages encouraging people to buy the stock because it's a hot pick. Once enough people buy into the stock, the scammers sell their own shares for a profit. Meanwhile, the people who were tricked into trading typically lose money when the stock price collapses back to its regular value.

It should go without saying that it's never wise to respond to unsolicited messages but, sadly, many people still do. Like any other unsolicited email or message, just delete them without giving them a second glance.

Warning: Evil Twin Hotspot Alert

If you have a wireless laptop and plan to use it in public spaces, be warned, there's a new way that hackers have for getting your information.

Basically, they have developed a technique, known as creating an "Evil Twin" hotspot, where they can override the signal of the hotspot that you are using and can imitate the hotspot from their own machines, which means that even though you think that you're signing into a legitimate connection point, you're actually passing all of your data through them.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any good way to detect or prevent this, right now, so the advice of the day is that when you are surfing in public, avoid going to sights with private information (e.g., your email) and ABSOLUTELY avoid conducting any financial transactions.

For more information, see this article.

Internet Fraud

I've seen a lot of attempts to use the internet to defraud people but one that reached my inbox, last night, was particularly shocking. The email was a very slick HTML document that looked at though it came from onlinesecurity@visa.com. The subject of the email was "Protect your debit card from fraudulent online transactions". This was the email's pitch:

All online merchants receive every day thousands of online fraud complaints.

In order to prevent any fraudulent activity with your card we offer you free enroll in Verified by Visa program.

Verified by Visa protects your card with a password you create, giving you reassurance that only you can use your card online.

Simply activate your card and create your personal password. You'll get the added confidence that your card is safe when you shop at online stores.

Once your card is activated, your card number will be recognized whenever you purchase at participating online stores. You'll enter your password in the Verified by Visa window, your identity will be verified, and the transaction will be completed.

You may activate now by filling out the form below. If your card issuer is participating in Verified by Visa (most issuers are) we'll verify your identiy, create your Verified by Visa password and email it to you.

The effectiveness of the pitch was hightened by graphics culled directly from the Visa web sight which, unfortunately, more than compensates for the occasional lapses of English in the pitch.

The real insidious thing was the form that was embedded in the email (which I will not reproduce). Among the information that the form asked for was your credit card number, your expiration date, your name on the card, all of your address information, your phone number, your card validation code (with helpful instructions on how to obtain it), your email address, you bank routing number, your checking account number, your social security number, your ATM pin code, your mother's maiden name and your driver's licence number.

In other words, a laundry list of the information that's needed to commit an act of identity theft. A close look at the HTML of the form revealed that the information was actually being sent to a yahoo email address by way of a third party website.

I work in the IT realm and I've been playing with HTML since it was introduced. It's not hard for me to see through this kind of trick but I genuinely fear for the many, many people on the web who aren't saavy to the tricks that people can play with the clever manipulation of form tags. I think that it would be hideously easy for someone who was technologically innocent to be duped by this kind of trick. I shudder to think of how many people's bank accounts and credit cards have already been raided by these scum bags.

Please, please, please try to educate your friends and families on the basics of internet security. At the very minimum, make sure that they understand that no legitimate business would ever email them with a request for confidential information. Not their banks, not their credit card companies, not anyone. Do whatever you can to drill that into their heads. Identity theft is a very real and serious problem. We can't expect everyone to be as technologically sophisticated at the bastards who purpetrate these scams but we can do something to make sure that our loved one's know how to avoid exposing themselves to this kind of fraud.