NYTimes TimesWire Visualization

http://parsons.justinblinder.com/datavis09/timeswire/justinblinder_timeswire.html

My visualization initially focused on the “terms” and “catagory tags” associated with each article.  After realizing that most of these terms were very specific, I instead chose to use the section that each article was a part of. I created circles for the articles and made variables for their size, color, and position, that corresponded to the section frequency and the title.  I hoping to give a basic idea of the section frequency within a certain period of time, however partially randomized positioning is still a bit chaotic.

My original design plan was to have a radial positioning for each section that slowly emanated  from the center. I used this process in my second visualization mockup, and showed the frequency of articles for each section within the last 24 hours.

Timeswire Headline Length Visualization

My idea was to pull in the headlines from the NYTimes Newswire API in order to count and visualize the total headline length and relative word lengths of each worth in the individual headlines. I ran into the technical limitation of needing more hours than were available to wrap my head around and make sense of the code that would enable me to visualize my idea. I have experience in using Processing, but it has become apparent that I need to devote more of my free time to becoming more familiar with the language and/or look into developing with an alternate language.

The applet & code are linked below. A look at the commented code will reveal a number of setbacks that I encountered on this project and I hope to address those technical back-end issues prior to launching into the upcoming midterm assignment. Applet at http://a.parsons.edu/~linc184/workaround/hw_applet/

[Week 5] TimesWire Visualization

Sorry for the delays. After some consternation about what to do with the TimesWire API, I determined my best approach would be to construct a wrapper and built out some basic tools for my use with it. As I went about this process, one thing that I kept coming back to was the ‘Section’ field for each article. As I worked throughout the night, I saw that over time, different sections were dominating the last 20 responses I was pulling (this is before I found out in class that we could pull results over a longer period of time). My prototype and mockup both deal with the of being able to track which section of the paper was currently submitting the most articles, as a way to get a sense of the ebb and flow of the production schedules of each section. I thought this would provide an interesting look at a hidden side of The Times, and I may pursue it further just to see what the actual results are like. My second idea which I unfortunately could not find a meaningful way to produce was the idea of an article-generated game as a way to combine the growing popularity of casual (especially mobile) games and a desire to have them be educational.

Here’s a screenshot and link to my SWF that returns back The Times section with the highest frequency of articles within the last 20:

[ SWF ]

Here’s a screenshot link to a PDF I made of the mockup for a proposed project that would include this:

[ Mockup (PDF) ]

Timeswire Data Viz

Data viz using the New York Times Newswire API (swf)

The Newswire API is returning the last 20 updates to the Times website. My data viz is analyzing that data based on section & time submitted. Each update is signified by the small light blue boxes. Its value along the y axis signifies what category it falls into (based on what section heading it’s on the same line as) and its x axis value signifies the time when it was submitted (in relation to the earliest and most recent updates).

Data viz mockup using same data

This mockup is a play on TalkLikeWarrenEllis.com, which randomly generates phrases based on his tweets (example: “Good day, sleek piranha of impending doom.”) albeit much less hilarious. The idea is that it would take headlines from the TimesWire and split them up around punctuation marks and randomly generate sentences based on those pieces.

NYTimes Newswire API

The circular rings are rotated around a center point based on the time the news piece was posted. The size of the ring is based on the number of characters in the headline and different colors are used for each section (for purely aesthetic reasons). The dense area in the middle indicates that a majority of the headlines are around the same characters in length. Click on the image to view the visualization.

Here the length of the characters are represented as a equalizer-like histogram. Moving the mouse over the bars reveals the headline and generates/plays a pulse wave. The frequency is also based on the number of characters in each headline – low for shorter and high for longer headlines.

The mockup below is intended to be a generative tetris-like game. The pieces are generated based the headline that is displayed along with the piece. Each section is color coded and has a piece assigned to it. Higher points can be scored by attaching the pieces to headlines that are related based on terms or people mentioned.

Post on my blog.

Newswire API

Read more about the post on my blog.

Times Wire

This visualization was intended to provide the feeling of flipping newspaper, to make people more comfortable with screen. I located section data on the top of the paper so that user can find favorite section first, then user can grasp the headline. I tried to design this visualization can be used with touch screen display, in home information system.
Made with Flash AS3.0, Papervision 3D

http://www.cre8ive.kr/DataViz/TimesWire.html

This visualization utilizes colors to categorize the sections, and articles are stacked up chronologically. I also tried to use saturation to visualize the time of the article however, it makes somewhat ambiguous color scheme for section categorization.

Times wire viz

news clock
the idea for the first non-working visualization is making something similar to clock movement with the data because times wire is about real-time news of past 24 hrs. Here’s how this should work. When new headlines feeds in, the old headlines rotate just like clock hand( minute) moves. so older headlines gets smaller and disappear as time passes, and the screen keeps updates with newer feeds.

words into pixels
these are my initial sketch for the working version. it is based on the same data set as the first viz, but i wanted to create something more abstract. squares = color coded sections , and as times passes, viewers can get overall idea of what section had the most headlines for that day.

working version
screen grab of working version. i didn’t make squares yet, it is just getting 15 headlines from nyt. for some reason, this one is not working in web browser, but you can download the file from the link below.

click here to download the file.

Times wire – Bylines v creation date

Here’s the first project for the NY Times collab.  Ramsey and I worked on this one.  We managed to find a relationship between bylines and creation date of articles posted by those authors within a 24 hr cycle.  We were trying to explore how many times an author posts an article within a 24 hr timeframe.  The axis is midnight, and the outer circle is 12 hrs.  The stories we were trying to tell revolve who is producing the most articles, and when the writers are active throughout the day.  The more articles posted by an author, the more dense that quadrant gets with their work.

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Midterm assignment

Create a visualization that reveals a compelling story using the intersection of two data sets — one should be gathered using the NYT APIs, and the other should be a non-NYT data set of your choice. Projects will be undertaken in groups of two. Written proposals are due next Friday and should include the following:

1. Overview
A short summary of what your project will be. Give me your best elevator pitch here.

2. Data
The data sources you will be using

3. Design Questions
A set of questions that you intend to answer or explore. At least one question should be about the data itself (i.e., what is the story you’re hoping to tell?), but these questions may also address design methods or technical approaches.

4. Prior Art / Precedents
Discuss at least two existing works that are similar in some respect to your proposed project. How do you see your project in relation to this ecosystem of other works? Will it contribute something unique? Will it address problems that you see in other works?

5. Collaboration
A brief explanation of how you plan to collaborate with your partner.