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.

Ten things every journalist should know in 2009

10 things, with links to more information about those things. Examples:

2. How to use RSS feeds to gather news and manage them using filtering techniques (basic or advanced).

7. You do not have to own, or even host, the technology to innovate in journalism and engage your readers. There is a plethora of free or cheap tools available online, so there is no excuse for not experimenting with them.

10. Learn more about privacy. You can find a lot of information about people online, especially via social networking sites, but think carefully about the consequences. And bear in mind that it cuts both ways, if you do not do it carefully, your online research could compromise your sources.

And 7 more really useful things.

Timelines

From 10,000words.net, 7 Eye-popping interactive timelines (and 3 ways to create one). Dipity is a cool way to make your own timelines, and Viewzi is a visual search engine that displays results in any one of several different visual layouts, including a timeline.