Nestoria Australia blog goes international

It's been fun to share Australia-specific property and technology news and chat, but there's no reason why we should be hiding our light down under a bushel.  There are some things mentioned on the Nestoria Australia blog that whole of the Nestoria family will find interesting - so all the Nestoria bloggers are joining forces to contribute to the same blog.  Which is the original one, at http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/

There you'll find the same mix of interviews with relevant players and bits and pieces of relevant technology news and treasure, so please join us for blogging with a more international flavour.

 

Sing for your State

There are some internet ideas that sound as if they've been thought up with tongues firmly in cheek, but when you look them over you discover they're totally serious.  This is the case with Australia by Song.  

 

The concept is simple, its a directory of songs about Australia, searchable by states or by text query.  There are a lot of quite comical songs about Australia - that's why I thought it was going to be a whimsical offering.  But it's not, it's quite serious, with an example of the lyric in question and a link to the Youtube page as well as the Title of the song, the Artist and the Location it refers to. 

 

It's missing quite a few mentions from The Whitlams though, so I've let them know.  They don't have a proper map search either, and I've suggested that too.  It's not the most relevant site to point out for house hunters - unless you want to move somewhere worth singing about - but it does prove just how versatile the ol' map format is.

 

 

Million Dollar Discount

If you thought there was no such thing as a million dollar discount then clearly you haven't been house hunting in a high enough price bracket.  But while it might seem reasonable to imagine a property worth multiple millions having a million or so knocked off the asking price, there aren't very many properties that would start at less than two million and then have a million dollar discount apply.  There is one though, it's on the latest SQM Research list of most discounted properties:

4 Flora St., Midland

This four bed home first come onto the market in August 2009 – so it's been up for sale for more than 680 days now – with an asking price of $1.9 million.  The price has been gradually coming down, and is now $850k, 55% less than the owners initially hoped for.  So this is someone's chance for that million dollar discount - any takers?

Place names redux

As Nestoria Australia grows up, we see more unusual search queries coming in.

Last week's highlight was Gum Scrub.

But this week along comes Jackass Flat to trump its dental sounding predecessor.

Nestoria Interview: Paolo Ciuccarelli

Grab your thoroughly mode t-shirt with the clever print and your laptop and come back to school with us as Nestoria gets all academic and design-y.  What with our last interview with CASA's Andrew Hudson-Smith, and this latest one with Paolo Ciuccarelli, who's an Associate Professor of the Politecnico di Milano and heads up DensityDesign , a research lab in their design department – we're delving further into the how and why of presenting data in a visual format.

Slide 1: Paolo Ciuccarelli

Pens ready to take notes, please, as we hear from Professor Ciuccarelli.

I came across you via the DensityDesign blog.  Can you please introduce this organisation in your own words, telling us how it came about, what it is you do there and what its main aims are?  I've personally found you've taken a slightly different attitude towards data visualisation than other similar 'labs' have and I wondered if you'd make reference also to your different approach.

DensityDesign was born as a studio based course within the Masters degree in Communication Design at Politecnico di Milano in 2004. I decided to share with the students the challenge of facing complexity through visualization. I started teaching data and information visualization within this context, and then I realized that there was a huge potential, and a need also, to research from the perspective of design in a field very focused in the direct (almost automatic) representation of data.

I would start explaining what we do by saying what we think our work is not: normally people address to us using the terms “data and information visualization”.  Actually this is not exactly our aim. The purpose of anything we do is to use communication design and visualization to represent and communicate complex phenomena. We believe that complexity is the very nature of most of the phenomenon we have to deal with, especially social ones, and we think that most of the biggest contemporary problems and issues can be properly faced only by addressing them with a perspective, a point of view and an approach based on complexity.

In this domain, visualization is a powerful tool to try to retain as much as possible the complexity of those issues and problems, and to bring this complexity to the eyes of all the potential stakeholders and decision makers in an understandable way. We benefit hugely from the increasing amount of data and information available, which are certainly the main sources for our visual tools.

Slide 2: Cool DensityDesign projects

What are some of the DesityDesign projects that you think have been most effective?  And why would you class them as the most successful?

We have not (yet)developed a consistent method to measure the effectiveness (not certainly the success) of our visualizations. That's definitely something we have to work on, in collaboration with other disciplines.
Anyway, we can consider a success the fact that scholars (one of our favourite target user category) come to unexpected conclusion using our visual tools to explore data and information related to the phenomenon he/she is observing.
We aim to support his/her speculative process with a tool that is also easy to use, friendly, and – why not – also pleasurable, both from the aesthetic point of view and the user experience.  That's a way to guarantee better uptake and more success. 

Do you even have moments mid way though a project where you realise there may be an even better way to show something?  Or do you come up with many structural options in the early stages?

We think that in most of the cases we've faced (and probably will face) there is not just only one way to represent or show data, information, or the whole phenomenon. Any visual representation is a matter of choices.  Using the most minimal, direct and abstract visual language is a choice, and it's not necessarily always the best one.
That said, we normally don’t produce “many” options: we try to create a dialogue with the experts of the content domain and discover the “shape” of the phenomenon through an iterative discursive process.

Where do you sit on the question of style over substance, or do you believe that data visualisation sits perfectly in the middle, or do you think it still has a very scientific part to play?

It really depends on the communicative purpose, the target and the context: there are cases where a precise and direct representation of data is needed, whereas in other cases to convey the big picture the overall structure of the phenomenon is more important than to depict the punctual data.
We believe that, especially in communication, it's not really possible to separate form and substance: nothing can be purely ornamental, and even what computer scientists call “embellishment” can have a strong and substantial function in a visualisation.
We can also add the sometimes what is called substance is not so consistent, and could be illusory.

At DensityDesign you get a lot your data though collaborative relationships with people who actually collect the data, is that correct?  Who are some of the most interesting parties you've teamed up with and what sort of data have they wanted you to express?  

Yes, we think that especially in certain domains it doesn’t make any sense to work alone on the content, and that collaborative relationships are very productive. This is certainly the case of statistical data, where our relationships with statisticians is fundamental to ensuring, from the beginning, a proper relationship with the data.
We're currently working in the field of Digital Humanities, and it’s very promising: researchers and scholars from the humanities have now huge collections of documents, data and metadata to work with, and they really can benefit from the use of visual tools to explore, dig and speculate into those large data sets. What we like in this latter field is the approach to data, where quantitative and qualitative aspects are both fundamental. This is at least our experience in working with people from the Stanford Humanities Centre.
In a very similar way we’re working together with researchers and scholars from sociology (we have a research agreement with the MediaLab of Science Po in Paris), to use visualisation and digital method as a way to explore the Web and find patterns that can be used to understand social controversies.
 
That said, have you ever had any problem getting access to data that you're interested in working with, or do you usually start with the dataset/s and then decide how to present it/ them?  

Sometimes data is provided by the ‘client’ and you don’t have so many opportunities to question it. But that's changing, thanks to the web, crowd sourcing, sharing of data and information, and the Open Data movement.  The best way in to a project is to imagine first a tentative shape for the phenomenon you are observing and then go and search for the data you need in order to visualise that shape.

I know that you personally make tools available in open source, so do you have an opinion on the availability of data and other tools or products for developers?  

We really believe that openness is useful, in fact I'd say it's indispensable, especially for researchers and knowledge workers: you are evaluated not (only) on the knowledge you are able to produce once, but in your ability to systematically produce new knowledge and so new ideas, new products etc. Sometimes it’s only a matter of time: making a tool or a library available takes time, and we don’t have enough time (and sometimes enough skills) to do it. Ideally, everything we produce should be open, and sharable at least with the scientific community.

Do you think that the situation is opening up or do you find the government, for example, are still very protective of their data.

Well, sometimes institutions are still protective, but, as in many other phenomenon related to Internet, often they're just scared: they don’t know what will happen, and they're scared of losing control of the content. But I think in the end it will be released: data and information that are relevant for citizens in one way or another will become available. Obviously it’s better if they become available through the institutions that own them and that know them, in order to make it in a correct way.

What are some of the interesting things you see happening at the convergence point of mapping and web technology?

The most interesting thing I see is the power we have now to build our own content: to dig, and grasp and harvest the web and extract the information we need. We find ourselves more and more frequently building our own content and then – of course – the visualisations to show them, especially when there are not so many experts available in the field. Both mapping and web technologies are becoming better utilised and these are powerful tools that can enormously increase the understanding of motivated people.

And do you have any views on what sort of innovations could happen if people were given better access to government data?

Simply having more awareness in citizen minds is a huge achievement!

Any suggestions for other housing specific innovations?  I have to ask...  Or final comments?

I just want to close saying once again that any visualisation is not neutral, and so the responsibility for designers and other professionals working on this field is high.
The more visualisation languages and technologies are potent, the higher is the responsibility. In some cases the responsibility should lead also to the decision of not showing or visualising something; or, from a different perspective, blank space or silence is also a potential choice, and it could be the most effective design option you have.
Sometimes I question myself as to whether certain data sets should be visualised for the general public at all.  Regarding real estate or housing: is it right to show people crime rates, school data, all the social pros and cons for the different areas/zones of the city? Does that really help people to decide? What will happen to those areas where the crime rate is high? How this will affect the decision making processes of the local institutions and their capability or possibility to govern the city? How many of these indicators are reliable?

Thanks.  It is good to be reminded how powerful visualisation can be, for good or for ill. 

BIY

As in “Build It Yourself”, is still a popular option for Australian future-home-owners.  A survey, commissioned by Mortgage Choice and released in May 2011, said that 5% of Australian buyers are going to buy land and build their own home.  (52% of people were planning to buy an established home, 13% wanted to buy a new one and 29% were as yet undecided about what they're planning to buy– but I think we can assume that they're not wanting to buy and build, 'cause that takes a bit more planning and intent.)

It's a hard slog, I follow several blogs by people involved – read embroiled – in the building process.  So I'm not making light of their situation when I mention the following collision of my interest in data visualisation and property.  But I recently had a conversation with a friend who has a slightly unusual building project – she's building a virtual reality house for her Sims characters. 

I've never really been into the Sims, but curiously I'd just read something relevant the website of my most recent interviewee, CASA's Andrew Hudson-Smith, so I was able to offer her some advice and help her out. 

We watched these two recommended BIY videos uploaded onto Youtube by user LuigiRules:

And then unleashed our inner architects.  I think if you're in the middle of the BIY process, or considering it as an option for the future then you should definitely try your design skills out on someone's Sims and see how they like it.  I don't know if there are Sims delays getting building contractors to do the plumbing etc. but we didn't have any. 

Nestoria Interview - CASA's Andrew Hudson-Smith

Fellow Nestorelfling, Vuk, met some of the team from CASA, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, at the latest Geomob, and seeing as we've been rapping a lot on data visualisation across at the Nestoria Australia blog, he thought I might like to be the one to pitch some questions to the Director of the Centre, Andrew Hudson-Smith. You can find the whole interview across at the UK blog – I highly recommend it if you're interested in maths, physics, archaeology, architecture, urban planning, computer science, geography, or similar.

CASA's Analogue Tweet-o-metre, currently at the British Library

Australia's best property bargain

There's a new source of property news in Australia, it's called Property Observer, and it's headed by Jonathan Chancellor, who's been the Property Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald for the last 25 years.  Chancellor has said that he's aiming to provide us with news and analysis, and the ins and outs of Australian property – both from a consumer and investor perspective.  Sounds promising doesn't it. 

From this source comes a list of the most discounted properties in Australia.  You could choose to see the properties at the top of the list as the best bargains in town, examples of the collapse of the Australian property market, or just of agents not getting their pricing right.  Either way it's quite interesting to have a scroll though them. 

The first is 1350 Wynnum Road, Tingalpa, 4173:

Which was first on the market in November for $700k and is now priced at $380k.

At number 3 is 16/153 Kensington Street, East Perth, 6004:

Which has been on the market since August, when it went on at $845k, and it's now down to $529k.

Number four is 232-234 High Central Road, Macleay Island, 4184, which has spent more than 860 days on the market after first being priced at $299k, and now priced at $189k. 

Get outta town!

Search doesn't work quite the same way across different market, but as far as flight search is concerned the people at Get Flight have done something cool.  Granted, we pinned property listings to the map yonks ago, but pinning flights to the map is a little different.  Get Flight have done it though.

The interface is easy and the whole point of the exercise is to make finding a flight as easy as possible.  So all you do is put in your To: and From: and a Price, if you have one in mind and off you go, the site gives you a list of where you can travel for what.

From Perth to Sydney

From Sydney to Anywhere

From Perth to Anywhere

We like to see people making it quicker and easier to do things. 

How close the past

The last blog post was about buildings of the future, but this one is about maps from the past.  And how well old fashioned cartography stacks up to today's technology, actually.

There are plenty of places where you can find old and unusual maps (Strange Maps is an in house favourite at Nestoria), but the collection put together by David Rumsay and Co.  is possibly one of the largest offline – he has about 150,000 – just a selection of which he also makes available online as well.  His site offers not just the ability to browse old maps, it also layers some of them over Google Maps maps and Google Earth maps, allowing you to see just how closely the old, hand drawn maps match up to the satellite versions. 

In order to position the maps properly they go though a process called geo-referencing, where the main cities and landmarks are all lined up, and the older maps are, only if necessary, skewed slightly so that they can be laid on top, but the four available for Australia are all quite close to spot on – when it comes to the coastline at least.  It's still worth twiddling with the transparency though so you can get a better look at the differences.  And taking a moment to consider how big and abstract a task this must have seen to the early cartographers.

The first Australian map is of NSW and south eastern Australian, drawn by John Arrowsmith in 1844, and is based on the latest accounts from returning explorers.  This was one of the most accurate maps of its time:

There's also a 1840 map of maritime Adelaide, which shows tide conditions:

And a 1843 map of Western Australia showing the new settlements and the very square way the region was broken up:

The last map is of the whole country, drawn in 1842, and coming with extensive notes regarding recent discoveries:

There are about 17,000 maps online at  www.davidrumsey.com, and about 120 that have been overlaid onto the Google Maps maps.  Her'es where you can find them: