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Entries in Google (4)

Tuesday

15Dec2009

Data Visualisation using Google Fusion Tables

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:05

Google labs released something called Fusion Tables in June which allows people to import and visualise structured data in various ways. If this data is public data then the resulting visualisations can be shared as a widget which can be embedded in any website as you would do with video. (see below)

Fusion tables are also interesting for their approach to creating online public collaborative databases. With Fusion tables you can merge data with other tables, open and secure parts of your tables and collaborate on data down to the cell level. An interesting potential approach for a lot organisations especially charities or government bodies. Almost a wikki for structured data.

Google have also recently added an API to allowing one to update and query your dataset in Fusion Tables programmatically.

Below is an example of a animated visualisation of historical production data for a few countries (from the BP statistical review) which I created in about 5 minutes. Play around with it and I would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on how visualisations such as this would be applicable to their industry.

Warning! do not select a country and trails when running the animation - this seems to be too much for my browser

Stephen |

Google wave shows its potental through BPM

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 06:37

Since the release of Google Wave there has been a lot of talk about the interface and getting over this initial challenge to find the potential value. As I have said before I think that the biggest value will be in shared document collaboration, but that as the tool matures and people innovate I am sure other uses will appear.

Well that innovation is already happening. SAP have devloped a prototype Wave extension called Gravity that extends the document collaboration paradigm to collaborative Business Process Modelling (BPM). The video below shows it in action.

You could imagine working in a similar way as a cross domain/company virtual team to develop, improve and agree on work processes related to a Lean Six Sigma initiative or as part of the change management for the introduction of new technology for instance.

Apart from providing an interesting view of BPM capability using the Wave paradigm of being able to have multiple users contibuting at the same time, the video also does a good job of showing how people come and go during the course of a project. This highlights the importance and value of the playback feature for helping people get up to speed on ongoing work and discussions but also in helping document decisions.

From a BPM perspective there is potential for Google Wave to be used to handle any activity that involves collaboration amongst people as part of a formal business process, for which it could maintains the complete record of discussion and decisions.

Already there are some interesting applications of Google Wave appearing. Do you know of any?

Stephen |

Google Wave

Monday, November 9, 2009 at 06:46

I have finally received an invitation to Google Wave. So of course I now have to try it out. The first problem of course is that as a collaboration tool you really do need to have other people to collaborate with to get any real value. I have invited a number of people I know both at work and privately and I am looking forward to trying to unlock the tools potential.

My first impression is that the interface is a little overwhelming, but sort of familiar as well given that I am a Gmail user already. From what I can see this seems to be a very common reaction. One website that I have found extremely helpful in finding my feet is completewaveguide.com.

Accessing public waves is one other way to get started, and doing this shows that the majority of people, in public waves at least, are using wave as a sort of manic Facebook crossed with an instant messaging tool. Still I think that is inevitable result of everyone's prior experience and usage will evolve over time. I think that one of the biggest areas of value will be in shared document collaboration, and as the tool matures and people inovate I am sure other areas will become clear.

Are you using Google Wave?

Stephen |

Google Chrome and comic books

Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 08:41

Well the big news in the computing world recently is that Google have announced a new web browser which is available as a beta download. Google's surprise new web browser is called Google Chrome and according to Google is built from scratch to meet the demands of todays Internet.

Open Source

Actually built from scratch is not entirely accurate as it reuses a number of existing open source technologies, including Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox. In fact the new browser is also going to be open source, but why a new browser? Well as Google's blog explains:

"We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

So what are the new things that have resulted from this complete rethink? Well probably the main thing is that it allows for a multi-threaded approach which will allows each tab to run as a separate process. This will mean it is faster, more memory efficient, should make it more stable and limits any problem to a specific tab only and not the whole browser. The same approach is applied to the security as well.

Comic Book

What I really liked though is the explaination of some of the technical and design features through the use of a comic book. It seems like quite a nice visual way of explaining technical ideas and one that could be used quite effectively by anyone wanting to get technical ideas across to an audience. From an Information Management perspective I think it could be quite effective as a way for explaining both the value of IM and the need for appropriate information behaviours.

Have you looked at Google's comic? What do you think?

Stephen |

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