The next generation of data searching
Google’s public data search “makes it easy to find and compare public data.” Unemployment and population data (national, state and local) are available now, with promises of more to come. Google “population” or “unemployment” to see what it looks like.
Wolfram|Alpha, launching in May, promises to be even more cool:
What can it do? It can describe places, like Lexington, Mass., by its vital statistics, like location, population, weather, etc. It can compare Lexington with Moscow. If you type “LDL 180,” it will tell you the percentile of the population with higher or lower cholesterol and show you the answer on a chart. If you tell “LDL 180 male 45,” it will adjust the chart for gender and age group. It can chart the life expectancy of a male age 40 in Italy or tell you who was president of Brazil in 1928.
Historians will face ‘black hole’ of lost material
The head of the British Library warns that “historians face a ‘black hole’ of lost material unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records.”
Journalists toolbox
The Journalist’s Toolbox, newly sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists, has tons of links to all sorts of useful web sites, from public records directories to Find-a-Grave.
Watch Walmart take over America
Not brand new, but fascinating: Flowing Data has a time-lapse map showing the growth of Walmart since the 1960s.
Congressional word clouds
Capitol Words “visualizes what lawmakers say by calculating their word frequency, giving you an at-a-glance view of which issues they address over time.” Includes a list of the most and least vocal members, and a map, so you can see what your state’s representatives are talking about. From the Sunlight Foundation. Via graphicdesignr.
Google adds magazines to book search
Google is digitizing the archives of magazines. Search Google Books now to find issues of New York, Runner’s World, Baseball Digest, Popular Science, CIO, Ebony, Wedding, Jet, and Popular Mechanics. Not surprisingly, Google plans to add more:
Over time, as we scan more articles, you’ll see more and more magazines appear in Google Book Search results. Eventually, we’ll also begin blending magazine results into our main Google.com search results, so you may begin finding magazines you didn’t even know you were looking for. For now you can restrict your search to magazines we’ve scanned by trying an advanced search.
Life photo archive hosted by Google
“Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.”
World Stadiums
World Stadiums is the “most comprehensive stadium database on the net,” with rankings, capacities, and year built for more than 10,000 stadiums in more than 220 countries, and photos of most of the big ones. Via Infomaniac: Behind the News.
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