Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

Disaggregated data

About a week ago, I attended a discussion session and social event on ‘data journalism’. To a large degree, it was about converting datasets, many of them collected from governments, into news stories of interest to the general public. You can take crime data, for instance, and process it into a form with a lot of general appeal. The same goes for education, transport, and other topics.

One general point that the discussion reminded me of is the importance of aggregated versus disaggregated data. For example, saying that the average income in Happytown is $75,000 is quite different from providing the individual data points for every person in the town. If you give someone the first piece of data, all they can really do is report it and compare it with similar statistics. If you give them the disaggregated data, they can do all sorts of their own analysis. What do the top and bottom 10% of the population earn? Are there any high or low outsiders?

If the data is embedded in a database with other types of information, you can do even more fancy stuff. Which are the richest neighbourhoods in town? What level of education does the average person earning more than $100,000 possess? If you can link databases together, you can do even more. What kinds of crime are committed in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods? How about in the richest?

All this creates privacy risks, particularly given how data from different databases can be meshed together and used to identify individuals. There is also the risk of errors, if data from different sources is incorrectly integrated, or if the methodology of analysis is not sound. All the more reason why basic statistical literacy is an increasingly important piece of education to possess, for those trying to make sense of the world. Otherwise, you may fall victim to deeply faulty claims. The average income of a Happytown resident who owns a monocle may be $500,000, but that doesn’t mean that buying a monocle will make you rich.

Diaspora – a less evil Facebook?

I am increasingly wary of Facebook. I don’t trust them with my photos, phone number, or full name. I worry about all the information they can extrapolate from my web of friends.

My hope is that Disapora will emerge as a less evil social network – one that supplies the considerable benefits of social networking, but with real respect for the privacy and interests of users.

Thanks to my friend Alison, I have an account on the alpha version of Diaspora. I have some invitations, so if anyone is especially keen to give it a try, they should let me know.

Use a wiki to make a family tree

Yesterday it occurred to me that a wiki would be an ideal way to assemble a family tree.

People could be added in, with open fields where information about them can be added. There could be basic things – like dates of birth, marriage, and death – and more personal ones, like schools attended and so on.

By making it a wiki, the project wouldn’t put a huge burden on a single person, and everyone could easily contribute what they knew.

Custom software specifically intended for making family tree wikis would probably be better than using generic wiki software like MediaWiki. It could be tweaked to suit the purpose more intuitively and be easier to use.

Smartphones and location data

There have been some worrisome revelations recently about Apple and Google tracking people by the location of their cell phones. In Google’s case, the tracking may be part of an advertising strategy.

It seems like online privacy is really a losing battle these days. Perhaps consumer anger about these latest tracking allegations will encourage regulators to keep a closer eye on what sort of monitoring technologies are being deployed without the full understanding of consumers.

Digital Photo Professional, Photoshop, Flickr Uploader

I have finally processed some photos that had been too-long ignored:

Now I can go get some new images – maybe some indoor portraiture, or still life stuff. Or some more ‘spring emerging from the Ottawa freezer’ shots.

[Update: 1 May 2011] Bonus: Enriched Bread Artists – Open House 2011

Where paywalls might work

Making internet browsers pay for content is a big challenge. No matter how good your stuff is, chances are someone is giving away something similarly good for free. As such, most websites opt to fund themselves through advertising.

One place paywalls do seem to have promise is for sites that people access for work-related reasons. Then, the situation is akin to the subscriptions universities have to databases of journal articles. Their staff need them, and so the organization pays the subscription fee. That’s a model that news organizations might be able to use, given that the work of many different people is affected by the information they provide.

STRATFOR is one organization experimenting with different funding models for information online. They probably have some institutional subscribers, but they also advertise directly to interested individuals, sometimes offering significant discounts to lure those whose demand is more elastic.

Shaving methods

I have previously mentioned Put This On as an interesting fashion-themed blog. It seems worth pointing out that their fourth video ‘Grooming‘ is full of what I consider bad advice.

They suggest that the proper way to shave is to use shaving soap, a badger hair brush, and an old-fashioned razor. This is dangerous, takes forever, and involves terrorizing badgers.

You are much better off getting some shaving oil (like the kind sold by King of Shaves) and a modern razor like the Mach3. Shaving oil doesn’t hide your skin, so you are less likely to cut yourself, and a couple of drops per day is all that is required. It is quick, cheap, safe, and vegan-friendly.

Georgia’s drug courts

Ira Glass recently produced an especially interesting episode of This American Life, talking about a particular drug court in the United States: Very Tough Love.

One potential advantage of the fiscal mess states like Canada and the United States have gotten themselves into is that it might help drive the advancement of more sensible drug policies. Our current approach is excessively punitive, fails to respect the sovereignty of the individual over their body, and is needlessly costly and destructive.