The Google Public Data Explorer is a visualization app that brings life to public policy data (or really any statistics you have) through animation.
Google picked up the software when it purchased Trendalyzer in 2007.
You may a remember a popular TED conference video, “Dr. Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes.” Rosling was using Trendalyzer software developed by his non-profit organization, Gapminder, to dramatically display life expectancy improvements as income levels rose.
Last week, Google opened up the Public Data Explorer to accept anyone’s data— until now you could view a few sets of data from various US government agencies and the World Bank.
There’s a new data format to master as well.
Called Dataset Publishing Language or DSPL is an XML-ish specification that organizes tabular data into visually more interesting slices that have associated dimensions—e.g., life expectancy, fertility rates, ets.
It is a complex format, but no doubt this will be a big boost to researchers, journalists, Gov 2.o non-profits and more than a few bloggers.
I am quite tempted to learn enough DSPL to work with New York City’s own public database, then NYC Datamine.
Related articles
- Visualize Your Own Information With Google Public Data Explorer (googleblog.blogspot.com)
- Public Data Explorer (google.com)
- DSPL Developer Guide (google.com)
- Hans Rosling’s “200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes” (youtube.com)
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