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• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
  (tags: data-visualisation charts graphs)

We’ve been renovating:

Says it all really. Update” It’s a hoax, of course (see comments). Still, the underlying message – that stupid people are more likely to vote for McCain/Palin – seems sound enough. Over the fold: an actual table showing voting patterns by educational attainment.

(From Dan Croak, via @mpesce)

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I’ve just spent two days at the 2008 Making Links Conference - the annual community sector ICT and web workers’ conference. It’s been a simultaneously intellectually energising and physically exhausting experience (for my sins I’ve been up at 5:30 am each day to get the train into Melbourne, rather than doing the sensible thing and staying in town). Here, in no particular order, are some brief observations and a few choice quotes.

• The first post-Twitter Making Links. While there were only a handful of twitterers, the tweets were flying thick and fast using the hashtag #ML08. Lots of discussion in presentations about Twitter too, although some delegates admitted to not getting what all the fuss is about. Said one: “this is just a geekier way of passing notes in class.” And another: “last year everyone was talking about Facebook, now everyone’s talking about Twitter - and I don’t even have a Facebook account yet!”
• Email is dead. “Young people don’t use email any more - email is for communicating with your parents” (Penny Hagen)
• Social tech is the new black. Yes, I know this is old news on the bleeding edge, but for the community sector I think it is significant. Lots of ideas about ways of leveraging social networking platforms to build social capital.
• The people are the network.
• Ambient informatics, QR codes and the “read/write city” — Where 2.0/neogeography
• Access for people with disabilities (a major conference theme). Progress is being made, orgs are getting it, people with disabilities are making tech mork for them in unpredictable ways. The digital divide/disability divide is real but the future is wide open. “We’ve never lived in an age where people with disabilities have such a great opportunity to get involved [in cultural activity]” (Scott Hollier)

The strength and challenge of this conference is the range of different organisations and workplaces the delegates come from. Naturally not every presentation can be engaging or relevant for everyone, and I did sit through some dross, but overall I think the event was a success and the organisers should be congratulated for making this important event happen.

Get out there and make us proud, America. Don’ let us down.

(Recycled Aussie electoral meme - see here)

The Australian Conservation Foundation has released a report, titled Saving Australia’s Special Places, which outlines some of the likely effects of global warming in Australia. The report (not available on the ACF website, but there’s an article in the Age about it) details some of the “catastrophic” ways Australians will be affected by living in a warming world.

The headline issues (at least according to the Age) are that wine production will fall, snowfalls in ski resorts will disappear, and beaches will be swallowed up by rising sea levels. You can guess at whom this activism is targeted – middle-class people who, the ACF presumably hopes, will be alarmed at the thought that by 2050 they won’t be able to go on skiing holidays, spend a day at the beach or enjoy a nice glass of sauvignon blanc at the end of the day. Quelle horreur!

I guess the ACF knows what it’s doing, but surely the real threat of global warming is much more significant than its impact on the overprivileged lives of middle-class families in Melbourne and Sydney. Milliions – probably billions – of people will die if the climate continues to warm. Most of these people will, of course, be in Africa and Asia, not in Toorak or Lane Cove, so I guess it’s sad that we lack the common humanity that this fact isn’t enough to trigger widespread engagement with the urgency of the problem we face as a species; instead the ACF has to appeal to people’s fear of losing their comfy, unsustainable lifestyle.