One of the great things about working at foursquare is having access to a huge dataset that — when viewed in aggregate — can reveal some really amazing patterns in how people use the product across the globe. To celebrate our one-billionth check-in, we wanted to create something that showed the scope and breadth of that data. In past dataviz projects, we’ve looked at the total history of foursquare and analyzed specific aspects of the check-in data. For this project, we decided to limit it to one typical week of foursquare usage and keep the visualization simple, to give people a chance to draw their own observations. What we decided on was a straightforward map, with time-lapsed checkins animating across it. We chose to color-code the venue categories to reveal a bit about the specific activity going on in different places throughout the day. Here are some of the tools used to create this visualization:

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Here’s Walt Disney explaining his breakthrough invention for animation, the multi-plane camera. A few things I love about it:

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NY Times mentions of "olympics" and "election", 1981-2011

Remember that awesome Twitter visualization of airplane flights that floated around about two years ago called Just Landed? How about Good Morning, the visualization of people tweeting the words “good morning” over a 24-hour period? What they have in common is that they were created by artist Jer Thorp, who is currently Data Artist in Residence at New York Times and a visiting professor at NYU’s ITP program. I’ve been following Jer’s work for some time, so I was very excited to see recently that he was offering workshops in Processing (a data visualization tool that I use and have mentioned in previous posts). I’ve used Processing for a few dataviz projects at work, and I’d really like to do a lot more. Foursquare has an amazing dataset, and I feel like I’m wasting an opportunity if I’m not always trying out new ways of exploring that data through visualization.

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FoodParc, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from wonggawei’s photostream

When I first read about Foodparc I was super excited for three things:

• Pork dumplings
• Milkshakes
• Futuristic touchscreens!

The first two, I have to say, fully lived up to my very high expectations. The third — which unfortunately is a big part of what is supposed to make this place special — needs some work.

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Here’s a great video of Daniel Shiffman, an assistant professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program*, talking about why everybody should be learning to program. He uses Processing as an example of how programming can be an artistic medium. There’s a fundamental point in this video that seems basic but I think is really strong, which is that computers shouldn’t be an end unto themselves, they should be used as a means of creation. While Processing is only one tool in the digital creator’s toolbox, I think this hits on what’s great about it. It’s structured around the goal of requiring only the most basic amount of programming to create something really compelling. The magic of computational or generative art is how a relatively simple algorithm can create something much greater than the sum of its parts.

* Man, three months ago I knew nothing about ITP, and now it’s popping up everywhere from the books I’m reading to the people I’m working with to conversations with friends. If the stuff in this video is exciting to you and you’re in the market for a graduate program, give it a look.

Just realized why those Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson posters looked so familiar (aside from the other probably intentional reference):

Speaking of things I found via New York Magazine, check out LA production company Everynone. Most of their work seems to consist of quick-cut montages of everyday scenes, assembled to fit a larger theme. The images, the music, the editing and the light are all gorgeous. Very evocative.

Ex: “Words”

I love these food truck illustrations from New York Magazine. They not only make me hungry for some gyoza from Rickshaw, they make me glad to be a subscriber. There’s a lot of reasons out there for a print magazine to be cutting costs wherever they can, so it’s great to see them putting the extra dime into details like this. I totally want these as a series of vinyl toys.

I’ve been messing around a bit lately with Processing, an open source programming language for visualization (among other things). It’s been a lot of fun, mostly because it strikes the right balance for me between making visual art and tinkering around with math and logic. I like the way that writing in Processing feels like the programming equivalent of drawing in a sketchbook. You can pretty quickly put together something visually interesting, and then iterate it into something more complex as you go.

My first finished project in Processing was a visualization of traffic coming to all of Situation’s client sites on a given day, based on data from Google Analytics. There were a lot of fun challenges in putting this together, like wrangling the analytics data into a format I could use, figuring out how to match the coordinates to the projection used by the map I had, and (most exciting for me) creating the simple “throw” physics for when you drag the map around. I was helped along quite a bit by the excellent tutorials on the Processing site and by the amazing community of other Processing sketchers. The whole project came together over a long weekend. Check out the video below or click here to download the finished application.

I’m just beginning the arduous process of switching to a new hosting company. I haven’t really had any problems with 1&1, but their support isn’t the greatest, and I’ve heard some stories of sketchiness in dealing with their billing department. Since I’m at the point anyway where I need to graduate to a VPS from my shared hosting plan, I figured I might as well move to a more reputable host while I’m at it. I decided on MediaTemple some time ago (based on the features available and multiple personal recommendations), but I’ve spent the last month or two convincing myself it’s worth the $50 a month (much more than I’ve been paying 1&1).

Hoping to soften the blow, it occurred to me to check RetailMeNot to see if I could dig up an offer code and save a few bucks.

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