Free and Low-Cost Tools for Data Visualization

Presented at the Alaska Press Club annual conference. Download the PDF to access the embedded links.

1. Free and Low-Cost Tools for Data Visualization Alaska Press Club Conference Anchorage, AK April 26, 2014 0 27.5 55 82.5 110 April May June July
2. @MacDiva Hello!
   I’m Chrys Wu
3. Journalist Strategist Coder Consigliere
4. Journalist
   Strategist Coder Consigliere
5. Pulitzer Prize!
6. Chrys Wu @MacDiva Developer Advocate The New York Times
8. Tell me about you.
9. Free and Low-Cost Tools for Data Visualization April 0 17.5 35 52.5 70 0 4 8 12 16
10. OK, Google…
11. Google FusionTables • How to get a photo into your Info Window • Find inspiration
12. Who likes maps? Image from University of Texas Libraries Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
13. TileMill How to use it
14. A gentle guide… For the visual learners among us, thanks to Lisa Williams.
15. Story MapJS • Learn how to use it • Find inspiration
16. Get more tools from Knight Lab… Easy to use and designed by and for journalists. Be sure to check out: • TimelineJS • SoundCite
17. Charts! So useful! Example charts from jQuery Sparklines
18. Chartbuilder No-code charts • Serve your own • Use it now • See an example
19. Why Quartz made it… Read all about Chartbuilder on Nieman Journalism Lab.
20. For when you don’t have Excel… LibreOffice free and open source suite: • Word processor • Spreadsheets • Presentations/Slides • Drawing/Flowcharting • Database + Frontend • Math (Yes, math.)
21. DataWrapper • Really learn how to use it • Get started
22. Chartlets Works on mobile! • Install it • Learn about it
23. Data Housekeeping Image by Cherrypatter/Flickr
24. TabulaPDF Turns PDFs to CSVs • Really learn how to use it • Get started
25. OpenRefine Clean and examine data • So many tutorials…
26. Mr. People • Install it on your own • Try it online Simplifies name cleanup ? ? ? ? ?
27. Mr. Data Converter • Install it on your own computer • Try it online Turns Excel data into web-friendly files
28. You can do even more with code! So worth it to learn!
29. Sheetsee.js Turn Google Spreadsheets into searchable data
30. D3.js Create interactive data-driven visualizations Start learning with “Interactive Data Visualization for the Web” by Scott Murray
31. Scraping tools Outwit Hub (Standalone + Firefox plugin) • Michelle Minkoff & Chris Keller’s Web Scraping Without Programming (Outwit Hub) tutorial Table Capture (Chrome plugin) Socially responsible screen scraping An intro to screen scraping with Ruby
32. Data Journalism Syllabi • Learn more from university courses all over the U.S. Image by @matylda/Flickr
33. Bonus! • Get a free technical ebook from O’Reilly Media
34. Thank you.