Simon Rogers

Data journalism: 22 key links

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1–2 minutes

to read

I have been teaching basic data journalism for a while now – and these links are so useful I keep them with me every time. I will add and update these in the future too

Free and simple viz tools

  1. Datawrapper: http://datawrapper.de/
  2. CartoDB: good alternative to Fusion Tables
  3. Google charts via spreadsheets
  4. Mapping: Google Fusion tables: http://www.google.com/fusiontables/Home/
  5. Tableau Public (PCs only): http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/
  6. Datamarket (esp for time series): http://datamarket.com/

Timelines

  1. Tiki Toki: http://www.tiki-toki.com/
  2. Dipity: http://www.dipity.com
  3. For showing networks: http://gephi.org/
  4. (Plus Google Fusion has a network map visualisation, under ‘experimental’)
  5. ISO country codes: http://bit.ly/ISOcodes

Google Fusion Useful Links

  1. http://delicious.com/smfrogers/fusion
  2. http://bit.ly/fusionwizard
  3. http://bit.ly/fusionhtml
  4. http://bit.ly/fusionworkshop
  5. http://bit.ly/fusionborderlinks
  6. http://bit.ly/fusionicons
  7. Google maps style wizard: http://bit.ly/mapsstylewizard (only useful for map style JSON)

Useful mapping tools to help

  1. Mapshaper – for simplifying shp files http://mapshaper.com/test/MapShaper.swf
  2. For choosing map colours: http://colorbrewer2.org/
  3. Shp escape – for converting shp files to Fusion: http://shpescape.com/
  4. Google maps style wizard: http://bit.ly/mapsstylewizard

6 responses to “Data journalism: 22 key links”

  1. Understanding the Data | Digitally Focused

    […] offering tutorials, online courses and an endless list of resources on data journalism have risen to prominence of late. In the last 18 months alone, three ebooks introducing the world […]

    Reply
  2. Datawrapper – Datawrapper in the News

    […] – Datenjournalismus mit Datawrapper (
Medium Magazin, Januar 2013 Simon Roger, Data journalism: 22 key links […]

    Reply
  3. Simon Rogers Avatar
    Simon Rogers

    I know – I miss Many Eyes. It would have been so good if they’d just carried on developing it. Datawrapper has picked up the baton of ease of use though.

    Reply
  4. Russian Sphinx Avatar
    Russian Sphinx

    I create timelines in http://timeline.verite.co/
    and here is my example of timeline http://bit.ly/Su8L41

    Many Eyes by IBM…. http://www-958.ibm.com/software/analytics/manyeyes/
    Many Eyes (interactive maps, charts, tools for text analyse). I remember that you know Many Eyes but I wrote about it just in case if your readers did not know….

    Inkscape (vector graphics software) can be useful to play a bit, draw something… and it’s free 🙂

    Reply
  5. Mila Frerichs (@mila_frerichs) Avatar
    Mila Frerichs (@mila_frerichs)

    What about timeline.js (http://timeline.verite.co), and all the great MapBox tools: Tilemill and mapbox.com ?

    Reply
    1. Simon Rogers Avatar
      Simon Rogers

      Have you had much luck with either? As a non-coder they are a bit intimidating for me…

      Reply

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