For anyone who makes a living on the web, you will know how important it is to get lots of data about what is happening. Bloggers and other content creators on the web acquire data from all kinds of sources. Managing all of these sources can be a real pain, but it’s imperative to keep up [...]
Plugging data into a spreadsheet is simple. It might be a little tedious, and it is certainly not fun, but it’s a job anyone can figure out how to do in a relatively short amount of time. However, generating meaningful insights from that data is a much more difficult thing to do. There is always [...]
Many smartphone owners have now subscribed to their carrier’s unlimited data plans. As a result, they stay conscious about the amount of data they use so they do not run their package dry ahead of time. Here to help iPhone owners monitor their data usage is a tool called DataWiz. DataWiz is a free to [...]
Are you a trivia junkie? Are you doing research where you need to find out what is the biggest something or the best something? Well if so, you need to check out FindTheData. At the very least, it will entertain trivia junkies for a long time to come. With FindTheData, you can look up interesting [...]
CartoDB is a service which allows you to upload data and create a map of that data, makes it very easy to visualise and form analysis or to share online with other interested parties. It only takes a few minutes to upload your data and create these maps, so you can share the visualisations in [...]
Treeviz is a handy utility that allows users to create and interact with visualized data structures. At the moment, Treeviz remains experimental software. However, if the author gets a good response the project will become software – not just an experiment. Visualizing large data structures allow users to break down tasks into smaller bits and [...]
If your work is entirely online and has you using numerous online services, you will definitely find yourself shifting from one online service to another. You keep your Twitter feed in check, check if your RSS items are showing up properly, monitor your Alexa stats, keep an eye on your Google Analytics figures, and a [...]
Despite all the tools in the market, Excel is still the most heavily used tool for managing and analyzing data. And tools like ExcelMashup make it even better by adding a visual component. ExcelMashup lets you create visual mashups of your Excel data by using Microsoft’s Javascript API. The process is not completely hassle-free as [...]
You may already know that using Twitter, Facebook and Google+ can have their own limitations. For example, you cannot search for a tweet you posted 2 years ago. Gina Trapani of Lifehacker fame has developed a tool called ThinkUp that’ll help you change that. With this tool, you can take complete control of your data [...]
Think With Google is a data driven resource that provides you with lots of consumer trends, marketing insights and other industry-specific research information in an easy-to-read manner. To start with, you can browse the latest insights which not only includes information about that particular topic, but also articles, studies and videos related to it. You [...]
If you need to track something but feel really lazy to use a spreadsheet or form to do it, AskMeEvery is a great alternative. It is a simple web service where you can create a question that will be sent to everybody through a text message. You can then reply to the text message with [...]
Data can be shared on the web in numerous ways but if not presented in context, it loses most of its value. BuzzData is a new social network that lets people share data in an easy and meaningful manner. Data sets are always tied to a topic so they can be tracked, and include an [...]
Tools that let you cleanse, extract or analyze data are usually very expensive and almost always tied to your desktop. If you happen to need something quick and dirty that can clean and transform data, Data Wrangler is worth a try. Created by a team from Stanford, this tool can let you perform various data [...]
Wolfram Demonstrations is a collection of some really amazing visualizations that have been created using the popular software Mathematica. Around 7,000 demonstrations belonging to various topics ranging from mathematics and physical sciences to creative arts and politics. Demonstrations have certain variable elements that a user can adjust and the visuals will adjust accordingly. Each demonstration can be [...]
Have you done lots of research to gather data but don’t think your charts and diagrams are powerful enough to convey the message? Google Public Data Explorer helps you with that by letting you upload that data and create powerful visualizations. The data you upload needs to be in the DSPL format, an XML based [...]
Creating a map of statistics with the data you have is not a very difficult task. However the job becomes increasingly complicated when the size of the data increases. Fortunately since the data is often stored as CSV or Excel files, you can use IssueMap to quickly create the maps. IssueMap is a simple to [...]
If you have a lot of data that contains names which are disarranged and not sorted in columns then this handy tool called Mr. People can help you clean them up. Developed by Matthew Ericson, initially using Perl and then Ruby, this tool is as simple as it gets. You just need to paste the [...]
We often hear about topics that we don’t know anything about or don’t know how to explore them on the internet. WhatDoYouSuggest is an tool that helps you in such cases. It is a mashup tool based on user data from Google and let you explore any topic step-by-step. Once you enter a keyword, it [...]
It doesn’t matter if you are a casual bird enthusiast or a professional ornithologist, you are bound to like eBird. It is a great resource with tons of information on birds such as their frequency, arrivals and departures, high counts and much more. You can view this data as charts, histograms, tables or maps. The [...]