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We are committed to equal access to technology. Our software is freely available, and anyone may share our technology and modify it to suit their needs - all without asking our permission. Benetech created Martus and Analyzer specifically for human rights data collection, coding and processing. These tools include cryptographic security features and flexible data structures that can be adapted to the needs of each human rights project. By releasing our software as open source, we participate in the technological community where tools can be audited and improved by others, as well as enabling widespread access to our ideas.

"Data docs is a video platform that allows filmmakers and journalist to combine elements from the web, such as interactive graphics, text and scraped information, with linear media, such as video and audio. Having worked in video both in long-form documentary and web video, we understand the power of visual media. Videos are powerful vehicles that we can use to tell personable or explanatory immersive stories. But one of the drawbacks of video as a medium is that they are finished products, which, after they have been published, become outdated fairly quickly. Advances in technology and data bases has allowed for data to be more flexible than video. Data visualizations and interactive infographics, for instance, can be up-to-date at any moment in time if they are hooked up to the right data bases. Think of charts of stock markets that updated every millisecond because APIs or other technological mechanisms feed them live data. We wanted to combine those two worlds - the world of immersive video storyelling and that of live and constantly updated data. This is why we created Data Docs. Through the Data Docs code library filmmakers and developers can 'hook up' their video to live data and other up-to-date information from the web. The library also allows you to integrate your own interactives with specific fonts and styles into your video. It enables you to project HTML, CSS and JavaScript-based graphics on your video. This helps you make videos that will never be out of date or, in other words, to make videos that are evergreen."

kdmc data visualization tutorials KDMC produces a wealth of digital media tutorials to support our training sessions and classes. While the focus of some tutorials is on technology and journalism, most are general enough to be of use to anyone.

A very good collection of dataviz tips and tools

8 must-reads detail how to verify information in real-time, from social media, users Craig Silverman by Craig Silverman Published Apr. 27, 2012 7:46 am Updated Apr. 27, 2012 9:23 am Over the past couple of years, I've been trying to collect every good piece of writing and advice about verifying social media content and other types of information that flow across networks. This form of verification involves some new tools and techniques, and requires a basic understanding of the way networks operate and how people use them. It also requires many of the so-called old school values and techniques that have been around for a while: being skeptical, asking questions, tracking down high quality sources, exercising restraint, collaborating and communicating with team members. For example, lots of people talk about how Andy Carvin does crowdsourced verification and turns his Twitter feed into a real time newswire. Lost in the discussion is the fact that Carvin also develops sources and contacts on the ground and stays in touch with them on Skype and through other means. What you see on Twitter is only one part of the process. Some things never go out of style. At the same time, there are new tools, techniques and approaches every journalist should have in their arsenal. Fortunately, several leading practitioners of what I sometimes call the New Verification are gracious and generous about sharing what they know. One such generous lot are the folks at Storyful, a social media curation and verification operation that works with clients such as Reuters, ABC News, and The New York Times, among others. I wrote about them last year and examined how in some ways they act as an outsourced verification service for newsrooms. That was partly inspired by this post from Storyful founder Mark Little: I find it helps to think of curation as three central questions: * Discovery: How do we find valuable social media content? * Verification: How do we make sure we c

Searchable Map Template with Google Fusion Tables Turn a spreadsheet in to a searchable map You want to put your data on a searchable, filterable map. This is a free, open source tool to help you do it. Features clean, full screen layout new mobile and tablet friendly using responsive design address search (with variable radius) geolocation (find me!) new RESTful URLs for sharing searches results count (using Google's Fusion Tables API) ability to easily add additional search filters (checkboxes, sliders, etc) all done with HTML, CSS and Javascript - no server side code required Technologies used Google Fusion Tables (useful resources) Google Maps API V3 jQuery jQuery Address Twitter Bootstrap Note: This template is now supports the Fusion Tables v1 API. For more info on this, see their migration guide

Welcome to Data Science Central! Data Science Central is the industry's one stop resource for big data practitioners. From Analytics to Data Integration to Visualization, Data Science Central (DSC) provides a true community experience through social interaction, peer to peer technical support, the latest in technology, tools and trends --and even job opportunities. We look forward to hearing your feedback as we grow this community of professionals in our exciting industry during times of dramatic change.

"COS-597G: Surveillance and Countermeasures (Fall 2013) Course description. This course surveys research on surveillance technologies and technical countermeasures. Readings come mostly from the computer science research literature, with some legal and policy readings to establish context. Course work will include reading and discussion, a few short writing assignments, and a substantial student-chosen course project. The course is designed for students with a solid grounding in computer science. Students unsure of their suitability of the course should contact the instructor. "

Meeting in Italy The amount of criminal money washing around the world each year is estimated at $2 trillion, and it affects everything from health and human rights to democracy and national security. Investigative stories have always led to cases involving corrupt activities and criminal conspiracies. But the nature of corrupt and criminal acts is changing quickly with technology and globalization. How can investigative journalists stay on top of techniques to follow and expose crime and corruption in the 21st Century?

Visual.ly - a new tool to create data visualisations July 28th, 2011Posted by Sarah Marshall in Data, Design and graphics, Handy tools and technology, Multimedia Visual.ly is a new platform to allow you to explore and share data visualisations. According to the video below, it is two things: a platform to upload and promote your own visualisations and a space to connect "dataviz pros", advertisers and publishers. Visual.ly has teamed up with media partners, including GigaOM, Mashable and the Atlantic, who each have a profile showcasing their data visualisations. You will soon be able to create your own "beautiful visualisations in minutes" and will "instantly apply the graphics genius of the world's top information designers to your designs", the site promises. Plug and play, then grab and go with our push-button approach to visualisation creation. The sample images are impressive, but journalists will have to wait until they can upload their own data.

Constructing the Open Data Landscape Posted on September 7, 2011 by Nicola Hughes In an article in today's Telegraph regarding Francis Maude's Public Data Corporation, Michael Cross asks: "What makes the state think it can be at the cutting edge of the knowledge economy". He writes in terms of market and business share, giving the example of the satnav market worth over $100bn a year yet it's based on free data from the US Government's GPS system. He credits the internet revolution for transforming public sector data into 'cashable proposition'. We, along with many other start-ups, foundations and civic coding groups, are part of this 'geeky world' of Open Data. So we'd like to add our piece concerning the Open Data movement. Michael has the right to ask this question because there is this constant custodial battle being fought every day, every scrape and every script on the web for the rights to data. So let me tell you about the geeks' take on Open Data.

Again, US-centric, but this might generate some ideas of what could be accomplish in your city/nation. Late yesterday we announced a bunch of new features for Influence Explorer: http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2011/ie-corporate-accountability/ As the blog post explains, you can now find information about a corporation's EPA violations, federal advisory committee memberships, and participation in the rulemaking process -- all in one place. I wanted to highlight that last feature a bit more, though. To my knowledge, this is the first time that the full corpus of public comments submitted to regulations.gov has been available for bulk download and analysis. This isn't a coincidence: regulations.gov is built using technologies that make scraping it unusually difficult. This is unfortunate, since everyone seems to agree that federal rulemakings are gaining in importance -- both because of congressional gridlock that leaves the regulatory process as a second-best option, and because of calls to simplify the regulatory landscape as a pro-growth measure. It's an area where influence is certainly exerted -- rulemakers are obliged to review every comment -- but little attention is paid to who's flooding dockets with comments, and which directions rules are being pushed. It's taken us several months to develop a reliable solution and to obtain past rulemakings, but we now have the data in hand. We plan to do much more with this dataset, and we're hoping that others will want to dig in, too. You can find a link to the bulk download options in the post above -- the full compressed archive of extracted text and metadata is ~16GB, but we've provided options for grabbing individual agencies' or dockets' data. If anyone wants the original documents (PDFs, DOCs, etc) we can talk through how to make that happen, but as they clock in at 1.5TB we'll want to make sure folks know what they're getting into before we spend the time and bandwidth. Finally, note that we currently o

Site available in Spanish and English Medialab-Prado is a program of the Department of Arts of the City Council of Madrid, aimed at the production, research, and dissemination of digital culture and of the area where art, science, technology, and society intersect. Many workshops for the production of projects, conferences, seminars, encounters, project exhibition, concerts, presentations, etc. take place in its versatile space. All activities are free and open to the general public. Our primary objective is to create a structure where both research and production are processes permeable to user participation. To that end, Medialab-Prado offers: A permanent information, reception, and meeting space attended by cultural mediators. Open calls for the presentation of proposals and participation in the collaborative development of projects. We have several on-going programmes, which are as follows: Interactivos?: creative uses of electronics and programming Inclusiva.net: research and reflections on the network culture Visualizar: data visualization tools and strategies Commons Lab: trans-disciplinary discussion on the Commons AVLAB: audio-visual and sound creation http://medialab-prado.es/article/que_es

Good source list of digital tools

City of Ottawa moves to formalize open data program http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/city-of-ottawa-moves-to-formalize-open-data-program/143323?sub=569517&utm_source=569517&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=TD+

Be sure to view the video tutorial: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/jigsaw/Jigsaw-tutorial.movhttp://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/jigsaw/Jigsaw-tutorial.mov http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/jigsaw/views.html Jigsaw: Visual Analytics for Exploring and Understanding Document Collections System Views Jigsaw presents the individual reports in a document collection and the entities within those reports through a series of visualizations. We call these visualizations the system views. Below, we illustrate each view provided by the system and briefly describe their characteristics. Click on the individual images to see a larger version of the view. Also, a tutorial video illustrates the different views as well and the interactive behavior for each view can be seen on the video tutorial page. -tj

Also see "The Information Interfaces Group, an HCI research group in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, develops computing technologies that help people take advantage of information to enrich their lives. " http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ii/