We are all generating a lot of data, and are attempting to serve it up in meaningful charts. This post addresses four ways charts can focus less on their appearance, and more on delivering relevant answers and insights. “Beautiful, terrible, and addictive” Twitter has turned nine. Today, it’s a critical source for breaking news with one billion tweets sent every …
Friday 5 — 3.20.2015
Facebook introduced new friend-to-friend payments on Facebook Messenger. Now friends can split a lunch check, or settle a wager right in a chat. And, for now, zero fees. Google Code shut down and moved nearly a thousand of its open source projects to GitHub. Here are a few important ways GitHub got it right where others failed. Should news media drop costly native apps …
Friday 5 — 3.13.2015
Google Maps is an app many use daily — after all, not everyone can live in a CityMapper zone — but have barely scratched the surface in terms of functionality. Here are some useful tips, including offline access and one-handed use. New digital projects often start with an existential crisis of organizational identity. Land the …
Friday 5 — 3.6.2015
Meerkat is a new livestreaming video app that launched and skyrocketed this week. Tightly integrated with Twitter, the app allows you to livestream video direct to your Twitter feed. It’s ephemeral content — viewers cannot replay it, but creators can save the original video to their phones. Despite the mass adoption of Gmail, Google has …
Charge up data reach with smart UX
Last week I participated in a data and gov tech roundtable hosted by Nick Sinai at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School. Nick brought together an all-star panel with Lynn Overmann, Todd Park, Aneesh Chopra, and newly-named U.S. Chief Data Scientist D.J. Patil. Entrepreneurs, academics, and officials exchanged ideas on the challenges of collecting, structuring, and …