"L.A. Street QualGrades, developed by the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, maps the pavement quality rating for each of the 68,000 street segments in L.A., the largest municipal system in the US with about 6,500 miles of paved roadway streets. Using a state-of-the-art van equipped with cameras and lasers, the Bureau of Street Services graded each single street segment of L.A.'s vast street network from from A (dark green) to F (dark pink). The grades were based on a 100-point scale called the "pavement condition index". "
"Humans have a powerful capacity to process visual information, skills that date far back in our evolutionary lineage. And since the advent of science, we have employed intricate visual strategies to communicate data, often utilizing design principles that draw on these basic cognitive skills. In a modern world where we have far more data than we can process, the practice of data visualization has gained even more importance. From scientific visualization to pop infographics, designers are increasingly tasked with incorporating data into the media experience.
"Social networking sites have grown more important in recent years as a venue for political involvement, learning, and debate. Overall, 39% of all American adults took part in some sort of political activity on a social networking site during the 2012 campaign.
This means that more Americans are now politically active on social networking sites (SNS) than used them at all as recently as the 2008 election campaign. At that point, 26% of the population used a social networking site of any kind.
The 2nd version of the Engage platform has been released with new and improved features and architecture, making it an intelligent social and collaborative space for researchers, data journalists and citizens, who rely on open public data for professional or personal (re-)use. After the release of the 1st version of the Engage platform in 2012, the worked to release new and improved features and architecture. A key motivation for those changes and additions were the results and feedback of the project’s extensive user engagement and evaluation efforts.
"There is a familiar saying in the project management space: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. What may seem common sense to most — developing a governance strategy for your collaboration environment — can quickly fall to the bottom of the list of priorities when budgets get cut or delivery dates become urgent (along with “nice-to-haves” like testing and training) but proper planning is essential to ensuring your urgent projects are delivered on time and within budget.
"Ride the City is a cycling map service created by Vaidila Satvika and Jordan Anderson that helps cyclists find the shortest, safest route to their destination. The mapping service avoids busy highways and other streets that aren’t meant for biking, and suggests routes with bike lanes, paths, and other bike-friendly streets."
"Palo Alto, Calif., launched the first open data set of city GIS data on April 19 by leveraging Google Fusion Tables. Data sets currently available on the Open GIS platform include location data, road centerlines, land use, tree data, public projects and trench plate data. In the future, the new open data platform Open GIS will provide hundreds more accessible data layers. According to the city, using Google’s fusion tables will allow the data to be queried, mapped, charted and mashed together.
