“Data-driven journalism is the future,” insists Tim Berners-Lee.

Journalists will need to develop familiarity with digital dataset interrogation tools such as MySQL, PHP and Python, in order to discover the real patterns, trends and stories which lurk beneath the proliferation of raw data now being digitally harvested.

via ThickCulture

The Beauty of Data Visualisation

The human race now has access to an unprecedented amount of technologically mined raw data resources, as summed up by the buzz-phrase ‘data is the new oil’.  In this TED presentation, self-styled ‘information detective’ David McCandless talks about attempting to tap this resource more productively by developing a visual language whereby emerging data patterns can be presented in ways which are at once useful, immediately comprehensible and beautiful.