2009 Research Roundup!
Every year, I stumble on a host of great research and data that helps me write presentations. Here is some of the best [free] stuff I’ve found this year. Happy New Year!
My name is Conrad Lisco, and this is my blog, where I post odds and ends, things and thoughts.
I work at R/GA in the Mobile & Emerging Platforms group. I'm most interested in the intersection of technology and culture. Addicted to location-based services. Live in Chinatown and love sneakers and street art.
Opinions are my own.
Every year, I stumble on a host of great research and data that helps me write presentations. Here is some of the best [free] stuff I’ve found this year. Happy New Year!
This is ace work from Facebook (I know I’m a little late here). ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ is similar to Facebook’s trend-tracking tool, Lexicon. Data is collected from “public and semi-public forums” on Facebook. To determine if a particular status update is happy or sad (basically sentiment analysis similar to Nielsen and Radian6), the app searches for popular phrases and words that the engineers have associated with each sentiment.
The graph contains several metrics. GNH represents Gross National Happiness. The other two, Positivity and Negativity, represent the two components of GNH: The extent to which words used on that day were positive and negative. Gross National Happiness is the difference between the positivity and negativity scores.
On holidays like Christmas and Obama’s inauguration, we were pretty happy. Conversely, we were sad when Asian stock market crashed and when Michael Jackson died.
It’s amazing what we can do with data these days.
It’s dataviz, inforgraphics, Internet awesomeness. We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion presents the euphoria, the despair, the passion, the dreams, and the desires that make us human.
We live in a world where numbers and data help us lead better lives and squeeze every ounce of inefficiency out of our day. And these days, the numbers are easier to understand and easier to use because of data visualization and infographics. I really like this simple execution from The Weather Channel. In addition to displaying the weather conditions, it also illustrates the kind of clothing you can expect to have on. This is useful and easy to get. The Obama part just makes it viral.
Here's the idea. NYC releases 170 datasets. Whoever can best make use of the data will win part of the $20,000 in prize money. The individual or startup with the best Web or mobile application gets an invite to a dinner with NYC mayor, MIchael R. Bloomberg.
