Modelling open data - new visualisation from recently released BOM data

The Bureau of Meteorology has released new data for reuse under Creative Commons licensing, ahead of the upcoming GovHack in Canberra next week, and Mark Hatcher has used it to model 153 years of Sydney weather in a short video (image to right).

The higher the temperatures, the warmer the colours.

This is a good example of how data can be reused by the public to provide different insights or perspectives into topics - providing evidence to inform different viewpoints.

These public mashups could then potentially be re-adopted (crowdsourced) and shared by governments, where they offer new insights, to better communicate with and engage the community or staff.

Of course there are technical smarts involved in this type of modelling, however tools such as ManyEyes, Visual.ly, Infogr.am and Piktochart make it easy for individuals with no technical training to create interesting views from raw data.

These tools can even be used by government agencies to model their own data - useful both for public engagement and internal engagement with staff or management. Though note it is important to only create infographics from publicly available data as the processing may be done in the cloud!

Mark's complete (41 second) video of his visualisation is below. If viewing it at work I suggest turning down the sound so as to not distract colleagues.





UPDATE:
I've received a clarification as to what data was new - and it's actually new functionality.  You can now download 'all years of data' in a single file, for daily rainfall, temp and solar exposure - hat tip to Jim Birch.

This improvement makes it much easier to produce mashups like Mark's above.

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CFA report on their Facebook account

The Country Fire Authority in Victoria has released a infographic on their Facebook account, providing a view of the traffic and interactions on their page.

Note that any organisation or individual can do this, using the free data visualisation tools at Visual.ly.

I've taken the standard report (which is very long), cut it in half and placed the pieces side by side for easier viewing (below).

https://twitter.com/CFA_Connect/status/205794349584359425/photo/1/large

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National Library catalogue goes mobile and also launches mobile strategy

The National Library of Australia has taken a major step forward in the adoption of mobile internet in announcing the launch of its mobile strategy and mobile apps for both iOS and Android providing access to their complete catalogue.

In particular the Library's mobile strategy (released under a Creative Commons license) is the most visionary and far-reaching I have seen in Australia, setting out to,

• improve access to the Library's collection and services for audiences, wherever they are, whether on-site or anywhere else in the world,
• equip staff to champion and drive the development of mobile services to improve access and productivity,
• adopt an evidence-based approach to service development and delivery,
• modernise the Library brand to reflect relevance, accessibility and innovation,
• create opportunities for learning, and
• facilitate connections, conversation and overall engagement with national collection material.

Through a series of tactics including,

• establishing and expanding the infrastructure and back-end systems required to support mobile initiatives, products and services,
• adopting standards and best practices for interoperable mobile content and cross-platform data management,
• seeking out and engaging new technologies to achieve marketing and communications goals, and,
• building, consolidating and sharing expertise.

Learn more about the Library's new mobile resources at www.nla.gov.au/mobile-resources

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Mapping Australian Twitter discussions

Associate Professor Axel Bruns, who has previously done marvelous work mapping Australian blogs and tracking social media activity around the Queensland bushfires, has released his team's latest research on mapping the Australian Twittersphere.

Drawing (slightly paraphrased) from the joint CCI and Queensland University of Technology media release:

With as many as two million Australians now using Twitter to exchange news, views and information, the internet phenomenon has become a focal element in the nation’s social discourse, say Axel and Dr Jean Burgess.

By analysing topics of interest and concern to Australians the researchers built a ‘network map’ showing the connections between different issues and areas. “Just as newspapers have circulation reports and TV has its ratings, it is important to understand the role which new media are playing in our society,” they say.

“The map offers us a completely different way to view Australian society – not by where people live or what job they do, but by how they connect to each other through Twitter,” said Professor Bruns.

“You can use the map to study developments in Australian politics, natural disasters or trends in public thought and opinion,” Dr Burgess says. “It offers us a completely fresh way to view the discourse that is taking place between Australians or different groups.

“It shows there are multiple, overlapping publics, interacting and interweaving in time and space across Australia.”

The map also revealed which Twitter networks are isolated from the Australian ‘mainland’ tending to connect among themselves more than with other networks. These include evangelical groups, cities like Adelaide and Perth, followers of pop stars, and various sports and beer lovers.

The researchers based their map on data from 950,000 Australian Twitter accounts, but say that the national Twitter population is estimated to be as high as 1.8-2 million. The world Twitter population is now thought to be around 200 million – about a quarter that of rival social medium Facebook.

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Chrome beats Internet Explore in browser stakes

There was surprising news from StatCounter earlier this month when Chrome topped Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser for the week of 14-20 May.

Sourced from CNET: Chrome now world's top browser, but beware the math

While this is only one of the services reporting browser use, represents only one week and is a global figure - so may not represent the situation in specific countries (such as Australia) - it is indicative of the changes underway in the web browsing habits of people around the world.

All major international reports on web browser usage have reported that Internet Explorer has been on a downward slide for several years, with Chrome or Safari picking up most of the market share shift and Firefox and Opera being limited beneficiaries.

While this reflects the growth of mobile browsing (Apple iOS uses Safari, Android devices use Chrome), it also represents a significant change in desktop and laptop computer use.

While corporate and government organisations remain major uses of Internet Explorer due to its lead in corporate management features (though Firefox and Chrome have moved to match these), households are choosing their main web browser based on speed, usability and usefulness.

Reliable Australian web browsing figures are harder to find - it would be very useful if organisations such as Google or Facebook (the top sites visited by Australians) released their figures.

However I can say that, from Microsoft's figures, Internet Explorer 6 use in Australia has fallen to 1.2% of the browsing public. This is a GOOD THING as IE6 is an 11 year old vendor-unsupported, insecure and standards non-compliant web browser, unsupported by many major websites and which adds, in my experience, 20-30% on the costs of any web development project.

I should note that Microsoft is trying to end the use of Internet Explorer 6 and has even begun taken steps to automatically upgrade people to more modern versions (beginning with Australia and Brazil).

You can learn more about Microsoft's campaign to end IE6 at their website, The IE6 Countdown.

Sorry if you are one of the remaining organisations using IE6, however my FOI request on web browsing and social media use across government has revealed that largely agencies have made or are making the move to upgrade.

From the now 65 responses I've been able to analyse, only 7 (11%) indicated they still used IE6 on desktop computers. While this is quite a bit higher than the national rate (1.2%), it is much smaller than I had anticipated. Of course if this includes large agencies the percentage of APS staff using IE6 may be significantly higher.

I've provided a breakdown below of the browsers that government agencies indicated they used.

Notes and caveats

• this represents 65 agencies, large and small, of 166 approached - so is representative but not population data
• many agencies used more than one web browser, so the figures don't add up to 65. 
• I've excluded browsers that no agency indicated they used (and I asked about all major browsers back to the time of Internet Explorer 6's release). 
• I forgot to ask about the use of Blackberry's browser on mobile phones - essentially every agency using Blackberries use this browser.

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