I’m generally pleased with how it turned out, but I think the presentation could be much clearer. I felt the need to make a screencast using Jing to show how to use it.

Newslab.ca contacted me for an email interview about the network map, and I think it addresses some of the concerns I have about the tool. One part of the email I sent that they didn’t use addresses one aspect of the lack of clarity in the map.

The Many Eyes network map was intended for personal relationships, like a Twitter network showing who’s following who, or computer networks showing connections, where there’s no hierarchy.

In the case of the Canadian media map, there’s a clear hierarchy, so it would have been nice to see, for example, parent companies at the top of each cluster, or as a larger node, or in bold, or in bigger text, something to show that these are the companies that own everything “below” them.

If the point of a visualization is to tell a story, the story of the companies at the top of the food chain is one this map doesn’t tell clearly.

Oh, and the other part of Changing Channels I did was this article on Canadian over-the-air digital TV. It turned out well and it’s very pretty well received in the comments.

In particular, they used English numbers when speaking in Inuktitut, and I wondered why. I looked up a tutorial for learning Inuktitut, and I think I found the answer. Here’s the Inuktitut word for “seven”:

?????????? – sitamaujunngigaqtut

If I’m counting right, that’s ten syllables. It takes more syllables to say “seven” in Inuktitut and it does to count to seven in English.

I believe he mentioned using a version of Parliament Parser which is used behind the scenes for sites like TheyWorkForYou.com and The Public Whip, both British. The latter’s Ministerial whirl (a Java app that isn’t working for me right now) is a very interesting visualization of cabinet shuffles.

Of course, in the States, all this data is readily available on sites such as the Washington Post’s Votes Database, written by, of course, Adrian Holovaty. It helps that the U.S. government makes so much of its data available in usable (or, at least, scrapable) forms.

Clearly we need to elect more nerds in Canada.

There’s also a Your View discussion going on.

Update Aug. 8:  And dugg!

From the story:

Occasional smokers were 40 per cent more likely to suffer from psychosis, while dedicated tokers who used marijuana daily or weekly increased their risk by 50 to 200 per cent.

From STATS.org:

To epidemiologists a 40% increase is not especially noteworthy– they usually don’t find risk factors worth worrying about until the number hits at least 200% and some major journals won’t publish studies unless the risk is 300 or even 400%.

Sports nutritionist Monique Ryan

CBCNews.ca welcomes sports nutritionist Monique Ryan to answer your questions on Friday, Aug. 3.

Kdz on ur intar-t00bs, weirdin ur languaj ZOMG!!1!1eleven kthxbi (Runs 2:25)

Click through to the last page (5 of 5).

I wondered at the time if I’d get away with it. Nobody even mentioned it.

Chats: Author Andrea Mandel-Campbell: Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson

CBC.ca welcomes journalist and author Andrea Mandel-Campbell on Thursday, May 24 to answer your questions about Canadian business and her new book Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson.

Official Google Maps API Blog: Creating Dynamic Client-side Maps Mashups with Google Spreadsheets

The current version, with a lot more information but without a database or spreadsheet back-end, is on the CBC site.

(Grrr… I gotta change my layout. Curse these narrow fixed-width columns.)