The Zeitgeist

Randall Munroe’s exceptionally wonderful strip about “Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language”…

Lately, in preparation for any number of projects on my plate now and into 2008, I have been trying to brush up on my data visualization skillz’ and so I’ve been turning to a few books that seem to be the core of the interactive visualization movement that been dominating ‘web2.0′. (You can see what I’ve been reading lately in the left side bar of this blog). My latest read is Visualizing Data by Ben Fry which was just released last week by O’Reilly Media.

Fry is the co-creator of the “Processing” platform, an Open Source, Domain Specific Language (DSL) that he and Casey Reas created to showcase various computer graphics constructs including data visualization techniques. Fry’s new book is really a great read in that is very cleanly laid out and its exposition is logical and flows very nicely even if you are reading it as someone without a deep programming/IT background.

One of the biggest problems with writing a practical book on the art and craft of constructing data visualizations is always trying to find a way that your read can actually do the things you are talking about.

Until “Processing” became available just setting up a graphics platform on which one could experiment was a daunting challenge (and I say this as a programmer with almost 30 years of pretty deep experience); the books that preceded Visualizing Data set the stage by presenting their Processing framework and presented great info on how programmers can explore and learn a lot about practical computer graphics, but didn’t give a lot of guidance on the craft of how to transform “data” into “information” that can make your point through rich visual presentations.

With Processing, which will run on OS X, Linux and even Windows, you can experiment with really advanced concepts without having to spend weeks compilinge software or knowing anything about the guts of graphics drivers. As a language it’s Java-like, but is stripped down to the bare essentials needed for drawing, simple I/O and controlling drawn-objects.

When looking though his and other people’s (like Neoformix by Jeff Clark) visualizations it strikes me, that just like a good UI in general, the more elegant the final presentation of a data visualization, the more intensive the work required to create it; and most of the time that work is not about the graphics itself …it’s all about the data.

I’m about 1/3 through Visualizing Data and I am really impressed with Fry’s ability to demystify the steps needed to take a pile of data and parse it into useful information. He presents good, clear recipes for deciphering what’s important in your data and how to display it so it has both impact, and can be interacted with by your users.

I’d highly recommend Visualizing Data even if you don’t have to create the kinds of visualizations fry describes and demostrates, but even if you’re someone who might need to just betting understand what’s important in data you have to work with.

According to MacRumors, Apple has seeded Java6 for OS X 10.5 (Leopard).    So, it looks like the rumors of Java’s death under OS X were … uhm .. exaggerated.  

Seeing how my forty-<mumble>-th birthday is just 14 days away and I am pondering the ennui  of my middle-age, my thoughts drifted to someone whom I haven’t seen in, well, more than 1/2 my life now… my best friend growing up, a really sweet guy named Andrew Mahon.  He’s 2-weeks older than me; we used to be inseparable as kids  …and today is his 45th birthday.  I hope he’s doing well and having a great life;  I think we’re probably both in the IT/Internet business - (there’s a very well known Andrew Mahon who is/was at Groove Networks which may in fact be him…) … I hope that maybe one day we’ll get to re-connect… 

Happy Birthday Andrew, where ever you are!

Quite a big deal has been made of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s diarrhea of the mouth this past week where he more or less pre-announced a 3G iPhone coming in 2008 from Apple.  Cringely esitmates that this may well cost Apple over $1 billion in holiday sales, and that this was a calculated effort on the part of the AT&T CEO to send a message to Apple and Jobs about who is really in charge of their alliance.  That may well be true…

 I have a slightly different take… CEO’s who shoot from the hip like this usually do so because they think either their cojones are bigger than anyone else’s, or they think they are smarter than their firm’s contract lawyers. Or both.   I mean let’s get real for a second… we’re talking about Apple here… does anyone think for even a microsecond that there wasn’t a executive level NDA in place barring AT&T from disclosing anything about un-announced Apple products?  Then there is that “exclusive 5-year deal” — there are lots and lots of clauses in contracts as big as the one Apple cut with AT&T that gave them that “exclusive 5-year deal.”  In order to get a 5-year deal there are probably several dozen or more clauses in the contract pertaining to “misappropriation of trade secrets” and/or “unauthorized disclosure” and/or”material breach” and/or “revocation” and/or “bad faith” and/or “material damages to Apple’s business”  …any or ALL of which will allow Apple to pursue other deals with other wireless carriers and most likely force AT&T to make up the lost revenue out of its own coffers…How much you wanna bet that AT&T’s lawyers (to say nothing of the AT&T’s of directors) are taking motor-mouth Stephenson out to the woodshed this weekend for a thorough  beating..?   

Stephenson’s ego may have cost Apple some level of sales — we won’t know until after the holiday season wraps up — on the other hand,  Stephenson may have just given every other US carrier a good bit of Holiday cheer with the news that iPhones will be in their stockings this year…  I’m betting that Jobs, being one of the smarter business people on the planet (having been royally screwed over in the by people with egos as large as Bill Gates) learned that people with egos like Stephenson (a Gates-wannabe)  just don’t know when to shut the f#%k up.  

I think Jobs was counting on it — he got the big bang and all the buzz he wanted, and if AT&T did the right thing - fine; they’d have their 5-year deal - but he knew it couldn’t last: AT&T would somehow find itself in material breach of it’s 5-year deal and Apple would walk away being able to get the iPhone in the hands of every carrier… and rake in billions more from a public that’s dying to get iPhones.

3G iPhone in 2008?  Sure.  That was always a no brainer… 3G iPhones from lots of carriers?  Almost a certainty now, thanks to Randall Stephenson’s ego.