Tag Archives: data

Excel, XML, and CSV

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I never thought the day would come when I would say that I wished that I had a Windows version of MS Excel. I am simply aghast. But never-the-less I have been looking for an XML parsing solution for OS X and can not find one which is graphically oriented.

I want to move certain XML encoded content to my blog and the best way (that I can figure) to do this is to import CSV files (although there is a WordPress plugin for importing XML).

I want to be able to do this, but the Mac version of Excel does not do this:

I really want to drag and drop, but this tutorial makes it look easy-ish to do at the command line. http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/oracle-sql-programming/how-to-convert-xml-to-csv-and-upload-into-oracle/


What am I Using this for? Well I would like to use it with itunes XML, Endnote XML, Bookpedia XML, BibTeXXML, SIL-OLAC data as XML, WorldCat Data as XML? Glotalogue data as XML.

Creative Commons and Software

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I recently ran across two software products which claim and use Creative Commons licensing (one of them, RGraph: http://www.rgraph.net/). These products are used to create visualizations (graphs), which could be argued to be derivative products of the software used to create them. So while the code product may be CC, the question becomes, is the data as it embedded in the graphs then also CC’d and are the Images the graphs create then also CC’d as derivative products? It seems that the world would quickly become confusing, if a share-alike license is used. Continue reading →

The role of relationships in an data centric industry

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I once listend to a Creative Commons Salon titled: What Does it Mean to Be Open in a Data-Driven World? and in that discussion there was a great discussion on what it means to have data which flows and is openMinute 50 has a really interesting comment about sharing scientific data.

http://blip.tv/creative-commons/creative-commons-salon-mountain-view-what-does-it-mean-to-be-open-in-a-data-driven-world-4725230
Continue reading →

Javascript Charts…

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These are some really cool looking Javascript Charts from Highcharts.

Highcharts Javascript charts

Another opinion on Highcharts.

They run off of JQuery, which is already used by WordPress and K2. It would be nice if someone could wrap this into a WordPress Plugin with a cool way to add / manage data from the WP admin panel. Let me see if someone did….

For WordPress there is WP-Table by alex.rabe. This project was handed over to another developer, Tobias Bäthge and retitled WP-Table Reloaded.
Tobias says

[one] can have both wp-Table and WP-Table Reloaded installed in your WordPress! They will not interfere (as they are not using anything together). They are completely independent from each other. If WP-Table Reloaded finds the wp-Table database tables, it can import the found tables into it’s own format, so that you can completely upgrade from wp-Table to WP-Table Reloaded.

There are some updated instructions for version 1.5, which didin’t seem to make to the WP plugin repository.

There is another jQuery plugin, called Visualize, that takes data from an HTML table and displays it as a chart. Cool. I wonder which, Visualize or Highcharts is better and why?

After we graph these data, is it possible to also make the data drive a SIMILE chart/timeline?

It looks like one can add data sets to be graphed with the WP-SIMILE plugin. Why not pull these directly from the current display table? or make SIMILE / TIMEPLOT graph time depth change. i.e. if the data displayed in the HTML table is propagated from a MySQL table then why not have several entries in the MySQL database with a time code to change? in a way tracking momentum. That is over time how much have these data changed? i.e. Display the same data set from 1945, from 1950, and 1955.

Why should we still use HTML tables instead of CSS?

ASIDE: My next question is: How do I keep track of all the jQuery plugins I use?
Is there an efficient way to do that?

FYI: There are several other Charting options currently available for WordPress. Most of these involve managing your data somewhere else and then using an API to bring that data to your WP install. The truth of the matter is that it is most likely that you are going to manage your data somewhere else anyway. However, I do not use Google docs to manage my data so I can not pull data from that source directly into my my WP install.
However, there is a plugin Easy Chart Builder. This plugin does not have “nice” admin section for creating the charts but does create an image from a data set inserted with a short code.

PS
Some solutions when using google apps to present data, but if Data Ownership is an issue. Then why use google apps?
http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/html-tables-and-the-data-web/
http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/blogarchive/014014.html
http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/data-scraping-wikipedia-with-google-spreadsheets/