Are you a stats junkie? If you're like me and could make comparison charts all day long you should check out Tablefy, a simple service that lets you quickly put together large and complex tables of data. You can compare whatever you want, and there's already a handful of user-created data tables like superhero stats, sports car specifications, and even a well-done chart of several popular blogging tools going head-to-head.
The tool is set up just like any old spreadsheet, except that you can predefine any row by what you're planning to put in it. You can drop in text and numbers or insert media like a YouTube video or hosted photo. In the chart embedded below I managed to throw in two videos with just a copy and paste. You can also increase your fill-out speed using simple keyboard shortcuts that let you skip ahead either by row or column. Some of the auto-formatting is especially well done. For example, writing yes or no automatically turns the cell green or red respectively. Trying to do that in Google Spreadsheets can be a pain unless you've got a template set up or take the time to format the cells.
What makes the tool really neat is that you can grab any bit of data from another chart and add it to your "comparison basket." It will automatically link up any related data like height, weight, age, etc., and put it in the right row across all the tables you've added. This lets you come up with crazy combinations. For example, I compared the XBox 360 to Iron Man (both awesome). More beneficial creations include a presidential nominee comparison, popular water filters going sink-to-sink, and a listing of poisonous plants to avoid.
Chart creators can also declare a winner between each column of data. Likewise anyone who reads that chart can agree or disagree through the comments or with a simple radio button.
Tablefy reminds me a lot of data comparison and tracking service Swivel. The big difference between the two being Tablefy's focus on just charts, whereas Swivel branches out into scatter plots, bar graphs, and pie charts. Swivel also has a huge head start on user- and service-generated data. For use in things like term papers or business reports, users are likely to see Swivel if only for this richer mass of searchable data.
To see an introductory video of Tablefy, hit the break below.
go to the table! ... Read More
I'm here at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference here in San Jose, which is about to kick off. At last night's Launch Pad event, four new services launched.
Fatdoor made its official alpha launch. Originally slated for a release at last month's Web 2.0 Expo, the service opened its doors for people interested in testing the service on their way to making it publicly available. The service touts itself as being a "neighborhood-based community social network," and a place to find local people or events. We'll try to get a hands-on later this week.
Dopplr, like Fatdoor is a location-oriented social network. It's currently in private beta.
GeoCommons is a social map creation and exploration service. Users can browse and create maps filled with various data. Like Swivel (which launched their geomaps last night), there are all sorts of data sets that make a little more sense when you see them geographically instead of on a chart.
UpNext is a mix between an events service and Google Earth. Users can control a 3-D map, and see where events are visually. The service is currently in an invite-only beta.
The conference is about to kick off. Stay tuned.
Today, Swivel is adding a new geography view to its data-sharing service. Users will now be able to view data containing city or country information in a variety of different ways, using integrated Google Maps.
Geographic data is represented as a heat map, which will display data as darkened and lightened areas--like you'd see on a weather map. You can also turn your own data set into a one of these maps.
Like other data sets on the service, users will still be able to compare multiple sets of data at the same time, as long as the data set has geographic information like city/country names and ZIP codes. Users can also grab any of the data files and use them to make their own creations.
Swivel is one of the six services participating in the Launch Pad event at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference that kicks off later tonight.
Users can now chart certain data sets right on a map. In this case, it's the cost of the Iraq war.
(Credit: Swivel)
Previous Swivel coverage:
Data made fun with Swivel
Web 2.0 Expo: Launchpad Day 2
Three new products were demo'd today at the Web 2.0 Expo, rounding out the big product launches at this conference. (Yesterday's news came from Spock [review], InPowr, and Webex.) Today the pitches came from the following companies.
Swivel makes a great data exploration service. See previous coverage on Webware and ZDNet.
No new product news from Swivel, but the company is announcing that the OECD is an official partner to the company now. Swivel is a killer demo. If you like playing with data, this is definitely worth trying out.
Vidoop has a new system that replaces passwords with picture categories. See this morning's coverage.
One thing I didn't mention in this morning's post: Each computer that you use Vidoop on must be authorized, and that happens via a confirmation message sent to your mobile phone.
TellMe launched a free directory listing service to compete with Google's new 411 system. TellMe is adding a visual component to their old-school voice-recognition-based information retrieval service (1-800-555-TELL). The system sends you text messages for your results, and will map them too (it fires up your phone's browser to display it). Also new from TellMe: A downloadable client app to make accessing the TellMe data even easier... although it seems a little weird for a company based on voice response to release a standard phone app.
Swivel is a data visualization service that lets you add your own data sets or search from a large pool of public submissions. If this sounds boring, it shouldn't. It's actually kind of fun and very similar to browsing Flickr. Data is presented in several ways, from pie charts to bar graphs to scatter plots. You can also easily tab over in any graphical chart representation to get the raw chart numbers. Where was this when I was in college?
Charts come in a variety of colors on Swivel
(Credit: CNET Networks)Most of the content on Swivel is fairly bland, such as the prime loan rates for banks, but there are also some fun charts there, such as the amount of money spent on lobbying and the percentage of alcohol in various brands of beer. Users can comment on any data set and rate it as well. Swivel also keeps track of chart views and viewer interest to promote popular charts to the front page.
It's free to host your data on the site if you want to make it public, but if you're using Swivel for business purposes, there's a fee. I'm not really sure who will want to use this service outside of stats junkies, but I can easily see the value of Swivel to students who want easy-to-understand, searchable charts and stats for term papers.
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