"Tool for journalists: Create interactives with Story Maps Create different styles of maps to tell visual stories with this free resource Posted: 23 December 2014 By: Catalina Albeanu Comments map pins mapping Credit: Image from Thinkstock What is it? A tool for creating multimedia interactive maps How is it of use to journalists? Use Story Maps to build embeddable maps to explain stories that happen across different locations and time periods. The storytelling tool uses ArcGIS Online, a mapping platform from Esri, to create a variety of map styles which can be added to news stories to create a more engaging experience for readers. Each map application is built with a different storytelling style in mind, with options ranging from linking geotagged photos to a map to juxtaposing two different maps to showcase differences over time. "

"Want to help fact-check breaking news like the Malaysian airplane disaster? Here's how and where you can do it"

Mapping Sheets Another favorite Google Drive add-on of mine is definitely Mapping Sheets. With this add-on, you can make better use of any geographical data you may have in your spreadsheet. If you've ever wanted an easy way to quickly plot locations from your data onto a Google Map, this is it. drive addons8   5 Google Drive Add ons You Need To Use Using it is ridiculously easy. Just make sure you've got a list of addresses and other related data in your sheet, and then trigger this add-on. You'll see a form where you tell it what columns in your sheet to use for creating the map. drive addons9   5 Google Drive Add ons You Need To Use Once you submit it, the add-on creates the map right in the sheet for you so that you have a useful visualization of all of that data.

"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of the drawbacks of video as a medium is that they are finished products, which, after they have been published, become outdated fairly quickly.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."

"Abstract Much of the data underlying global poverty and inequality estimates is not in the public domain, but can be accessed in small pieces using the World Bank's PovcalNet online tool. To overcome these limitations and reproduce this database in a format more useful to researchers, we ran approximately 23 million queries of the World Bank's web site, accessing only information that was already in the public domain. This web scraping exercise produced 10,000 points on the cumulative distribution of income or consumption from each of 942 surveys spanning 127 countries over the period 1977 to 2012. This short note describes our methodology, briefly discusses some of the relevant intellectual property issues, and illustrates the kind of calculations that are facilitated by this data set, including growth incidence curves and poverty rates using alternative PPP indices. The full data can be downloaded at www.cgdev.org/povcalnet. "

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?

Good source list of digital tools

Listserv archives IRE and NICAR offer several opportunities for members and even non-members to exchange ideas, information, techniques and war stories. Joining is easy. If you are an IRE member, you may view the list archives: * Click an archive link and login with any e-mail address on record with the IRE office. Click "Get Password" if your first visit, to receive your LISTSERV password (separate from the IRE website password). Most users will login with the e-mail used for their IRE login account. Please e-mail listmaster@ire.org if you need help or have any questions. IRE-L archives. NICAR-L archives. IREPLUS-L archives. CENSUS-L archives. The following lists are less active: CFIC-L archives IRE-EDU-L archives IREBC-L archives

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"Software for Content Analysis: Links to external sites The list below provides links to web sites where one can find information (often including purchasing information) regarding content analysis software as well as other types of software that are often utilized by content analysts. The list was last updated in December 2008. Some links may change. You might also find Will Lowe's Review of Software for Content Analysis useful. "

"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. "

"About story maps Story maps combine intelligent Web maps with Web applications and templates that incorporate text, multimedia, and interactive functions. Story maps inform, educate, entertain, and inspire people about a wide variety of topics."

When you go to a conference, there are typically several talks going on at the same time, and you can always tell there's a popular paper coming up when you see people leave a bunch of rooms at once and head straight into one. There's also the unfortunate case when someone speaks, and there's only a handful of people in the room, all in the back staring at their laptops. Open Data City visualized this activity during the German internet conference re: publica. Open Data City used MAC addresses and access point connections to keep track of where devices went. So a person might be in a room connected to the nearest access point, disconnects as he leaves, and then reconnects as he reenters another room, which provides the flow. It's fun to watch the conference play out even if you didn't attend. Each dot represents an attendee, and as the animation plays the dots migrate from room to room. Click and drag over the dots to select specific people. [Thanks, Michael]

Who can use Twiangulate? Job Seekers Looking for an "in" at a company or trying to learn which tweeps might influence the hiring manager or boss? Or looking for tweeps at target companies or industries in a certain location? Twiangulate has you covered. Journalists Want to find hidden relationships or linchpin players in an industry? Maybe you're looking for sources in a microniche? Or who's most followed at a conference? Twiangulate does it all. Tech Junkies Want to know who your most influential Twitter followers are? Love social network mapping? Want to know when two tweeps start following the same person? Twiangulate!

Searches individuals history of posting on Twitter.

What is Spokeo? Spokeo is a people search engine that organizes vast quantities of white-pages listings, social information, and other people-related data from a large variety of public sources. Our mission is to help people find and connect with others, more easily than ever.

TLOxp® for Investigative Reporters is a cutting-edge online investigative database, giving reporters access to the most accurate, comprehensive information on people, businesses and locations and the connections between them.

Understanding how to clean data is an important skill every reporter needs. Demographic, financial and other data is available on a city, county, state and national level in the United States. But understanding how to take a large data file and distill it into a usable form can be daunting. In this tutorial, you'll learn how spreadsheets work, basic data-cleaning workflow and how to use formulas and functions to clean data. This is a general tutorial and it doesn't delve deeply into one program. We'll use Microsoft Excel but most of the same techniques work in Google Spreadsheets and other programs.

Highcharts Highcharts is a charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering intuitive, interactive charts to your web site or web application. Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie, scatter, angular gauges, arearange, areasplinerange, columnrange and polar chart types.