Guess what just arrived? My review copy of Nathan Yau’s Visualize This. Combine this beautiful book with a little bit of beautiful weather (here in Seattle we’re eternally optimistic about having more than the 78 minutes of summer we’ve had so far) and I think I know what my weekend will look like.

Just imagine this in the present day, plus a book on design, visualization and statistics. And yes, that float is still there.

Madison Beach, 1930

With all the flurry of articles about Google+, here’s something you may have missed. Punctuation.  Similar to Prince’s unpronounceable symbol phase, Google+ includes a lovely “+” that is neither “plus” nor an indication to start pulling out PEMDAS and yet we’re supposed to +1 somehow. Never fear, Google has an answer!

Google’s help page illuminates the conventions of +1: “Please allow us to explain our +1 spelling conventions.”

I have to say, I was one of the early Google Wave adopters, though when it faded away I barely noticed. I’ve jumped onto the Google+ bandwagon, and we’ll see how long it lasts.  I suspect it’ll work out this time.  I just wonder when Microsoft will through their hat in the ring!

First of all, HAPPY SUMMER!!! As of about 15 minutes ago we officially switched from Spring to Summer, and Seattle is doing her best to show off her glittering skyline.

While Seattle struts her sunny stuff, I’m inside.  Somewhere else I might say this in a gloomy way except, well, Piraeus isn’t very gloomy. In fact, we can now say that we’ve been voted one of the top 50 businesses to work for in Seattle three years in a row.  This year we broke into the top 25!

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about data and visualizations and not that much time writing about the amazing people I’m surrounded with every day.  We have project managers who keep everything on track and still have time bust out a spot-on impression of someone that reduces everyone to giggles. Nerf gun fights abound. I can’t get anywhere near the high score on our Astroids machine, but I do hold my own in our Wii competitions.  And then there’s the work that everyone does- projects that deliver time and time again.

So here’s to you, team Piraeus. You rock.

I’m not sure who started the Labs feature of websites, but I’m glad it’s a feature that has been adopted almost unilaterally.   Google is pretty well known for it’s Lab experiments, ranging from the less-than-successful Google Wave to the more successful add-on Google Maps features.  Then today, in searching for something newsworthy in the business intelligence world, I came across Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Labs.

The most recent project is PivotViewer Extension for Microsoft SSRS, and I have to say, it looks pretty cool.  The example shown on the blog uses personalized reports (and some awkward personal photos) to display overall success at the same time as granular personal detail.  That is–if a particular segment is performing poorly, part of the red bar includes individual faces and reports of the people who (outlined in red) aren’t meeting their numbers.

As it’s a Lab experiment, Microsoft doesn’t offer support for this project, nor do they promise its inclusion in any upcoming releases.  You can find out more about the Lab here.

Note: I should point out, “recent” is a relative term.  Originally released in July of 2010, even the developer Cristian Petculescu’s blog (On Business Intelligence…) stops updating in November.  Maybe there’s more coming, but it seems sort of unlikely, which is unfortunate.  I can only hope that Microsoft is working on something crazy-cool and we’ll see info about it soon!

(Screenshot from Dinesh’s Blog here.)

One of the amazing things about social media is the social part of everything.  We aren’t in this alone, and there are a lot of amazing bloggers out there who write informative articles that also manage to be humorous and entertaining.  I wanted to take some time out today to highlight a few of my favorites.

Kendra Little

Kendra blogs at littlekendra.com and also with her new consulting company Brent Ozar PLF. I actually found Kendra’s site through her LinkedIn profile, and I’m really glad. She’s funny and smart and makes me want to go to PASS events.

Jeff Atwood

One of the developers who worked here turned me onto Jeff Atwood’s blog Coding Horror. I might not encounter the same things that Jeff writes about on a day-to-day basis, but his blog helps me understand developers a little better.  He’s funny, gives good advice, and I now know more about solid state hard drives than I ever thought I would.

Timo Elliot

Timo was one of the first employees of SAP and he jets around the world now taking photographs and presenting at various conferences.  His blog is a good resource for all things SAP.  He often posts slides from his presentations (though I teased him a while back about his clip-art selections) and he often tweets pretty fascinating links.

David McCandless

As far as I can tell, opinions on David McCandless in the data world are like opinions on Anne Carson in the literature world–some people love him, some thing what he does is all flash and no substance.  He has some really beautiful data visualizations on his blog Information is Beautiful. I’ve linked to a lot of his visualizations in the past, so clearly I’m mostly in the pro-McCandless camp.

Nathan Yau

Another great resource for visualizations is Flowing Data. Nathan uses a lot of social data for his visualizations and again, you’ve seen a lot of his images reposted (and credited!) here.  He ranges from serious (Geography of Hate) to silly (a cookbook of MacGyver seasons).

And finally… Clickstream.

This blog hasn’t been updated in a long while, but I keep hoping something new will pop up. I know that’s foolish hope, but come on. Narwhals! In case you don’t want to go to a site that hasn’t been updated since January of 2010, here’s the video, for your viewing pleasure.  If you track back, there were some promising tech posts, but mostly it devolved into dancing narwhals. Oh well.

I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve used Skype.  I found it indispensable in graduate school, and pretty handy to stay in touch with friends scattered around the globe, but then my camera broke and my home lap top got bogged down and I got, well, just plain distracted with the people I have around me in Seattle.  So it took me by surprise to see in the news today that Microsoft just bought the company, for a whooping $8.5 billion (according to this article).

According to what I’ve read online, Skype will continue to work the way it does now on mobile platforms, with the inclusion of Windows Phone and Nokia.

All this makes me wonder how far away we are from video calls becoming the standard means of communication. Back to the Future may not be that far off!

For more information on the acquisition, check out this press release from Microsoft.

Found this today:

Seattle is well known for its music scene, and a few folks decided to try to show how it’s all connected.  Check out their site here for more information.

So the data may be questionable, but it’s perfect for today. (Thanks to a former Piraeus colleague for sending this my way!)

Original infographic from Stivo )

Ever wish going for a run produced something more than sweat? Okay, and muscle and a general sense of well being and… Well, now it can!

The sun is slowly emerging here in Seattle and with the inspiration of a co-worker who has been training for a half-marathon, I’m starting to lace up my running shoes again.  So when I came across this article today (via infosthetics) I had to repost it.

When Nike came out with Nike + I have to say I was a little skeptical.  A tag in your shoe that tracks your run sounds great, so long as the network is secured and someone can’t hack into your habitual running route and lay in wait for you to pass by.  And lo and behold, some computer science students were able to do just that. (Hack into the network, not stalk, as far as I know. Info on that here.)  That was a while ago though, and I’m pretty sure that Nike made the appropriate fixes.

According to YesYesNo,

For the launch of the Nike Free Run+ 2 City Pack series, YesYesNo was invited to develop software that would allow runners to create dynamic paintings with their feet using their Nike+ GPS run data. During the two day workshop at Nike headquarters, we invited the participants to record their runs and then using our custom software we imported the metrics from their run, to create visuals based on the speed, consistency and unique style of each person’s run.

I like art, I like running, and I like useful data.  Does this mean it’s a matter of time until I own Nike +?

How often do you go to trade shows and business conventions? I found this today via VizWorld. I like that this visualization not only gives information about emissions but also suggests ways to help cut back.  Conventions are going to happen and keep happening, but let’s be smart about our participation and it’s impact on the earth!