Linux Mint running in Virtual Box Hosted by Windows 7

SAMSUNG GEAR FIT IN TRAINING

I bought myself a new gadget, the Samsung Gear Fit. I still had an analogue watch and was looking for something new. There are lot of wrist computer for sales. While browsing I fell in love with the Samsung Gear. Slick design with a curved display.

It not only a watch, but with a Bluetooth connection with my Samsung Galaxy S5 it also notifies me, when selected, of incoming mail, appointments, SMS, tweets or Facebook updates. On top of this the device gathers data of my physical activities, such as running, biking and the heartbeat of course. Nice gadget for 150€.  Published on Memeburn

UPGRADING ASUS PRIME TF201 TO ANDROID KITKAT 4.4

Slow, terrible slow, I was on the brink of throwing the Asus in the garbage container and buy a new one. Nothing helped,  though I could try to crack and put on a new operating system on the device. If I bricked the device nothing was lost.
I bought the Asus a couple of year ago and reviewed it. I was pretty enthusiastic about the performance.  Asus however never send an update, so the device was still running Android 4.1.1 and got stuck in the mud of data, folders and apps. Cracking the Asus prime is not for the weak at heart. First you have to unlock the boot loader and next you have to root it. After that you have to install the new recovery mode and finally you can start installing a new operating system. Cyanogen-mod I had tried on my cell phone, a Samsung Galaxy Si 9000,  which was a good experience. For the Asus Cyanogen Mod has Android 4.4.2 available.

PLURALISM & OPENNES are key in the SA Twitter network

By Peter Verweij and Elvira van Noort

Twitter has changed the way in which journalists
do their work – they need a new set of skills to stay
relevant in their field. “If you as a journalist don’t use
it, you do yourself a disservice as news breaks on Twitter,
radio, television, newspaper – in that order”, argues Radio702
presenter Aki Anastasiou. South African freelance journalist
and avid Twitter user Gus Silber adds that “hardly any major
news event these days goes unaccompanied by analysis of what
people are saying about it on Twitter”. It is clear that Twitter
has changed their news routine and their relationship with the
public.
Download the full issue in pdf format of Rhodes Journalism Review at:
http://www.rjr.ru.ac.za/pdfs/RJR_ALIVE_3_Twitter.pdf

HIVOS Data Journalism training at Nairobi

EJC targets data utilization in back-to-back workshops in Kenya

 

 

 

In partnership with the Kenya Media Programme of Hivos, EJC sought to tackle the issue od data journalism through a three day workshop in Machakos County outside of Nairobi 14 - 16 July. Working with veteran EJC trainer, Peter Verweij of D3-Media the nine Kenyan journalists, who a month earlier attended a purely technical training on data, were guided and coached to produce actual story outputs using tools they had learned on locating, scraping and analyzing proper data sets.

Read more: http://ejc.net/projects/news/article/ejc-targets-data-utilization-in-back-to-back-workshops-in-kenya

GOOGLE tegen ONLINE PRIVACY: 0-1

Amerikanen en Europeanen denken vaak heel verschillend over de gevolgen van het internet. Wat in de VS een beperking van de vrijheid van meningsuiting wordt genoemd, heet in Europa bescherming van de privacy. Dat bleek uit de reacties op de uitspraak van het Europese Hof, naar aanleiding van een klacht van een Spaanse advocaat betreffende schending van zijn privacy door oa. Google.

De advocaat, Mario Costeja González , had een flinke aanvaring met de Spaanse belastingdienst. De belastingdienst wilde zijn huis gedwongen verkopen om zijn schuld te innen. Dat was in 1998 nieuws, en toen schreven de lokale kranten over deze fiscale botsing. De kwestie is later opgelost. Echter, wie nu de naam van deze persoon intypt in Google vindt bovenaan de lijst met hits, een verwijzing naar dit oude nieuws. De betrokkene ervaart dit als een schending van zijn privacy en eist verwijdering van de informatie.

Gepubliceerd: Dieponderzoek: http://www.dieponderzoek.nl/de-terugslag-van-het-recht-om-vergeten-te-worden/
De Nieuwe Reporter: http://www.denieuwereporter.nl/2014/05/google-privacy-en-de-fragmentatie-van-internet/

De lange staart van De Nieuwe Reporter

10 jaar De Nieuwe Reporter:
- Hoeveel artikelen worden gepuliceerd?
- Wie is de meest productieve auteur?
- Waar gaat het over?

Scraping data van 25 augustus 2005 tot 14 april 2014 levert het volgende beeld.

De tag cloud

Vijf redenen om R te gebruiken in datajournalistiek

Datajournalistiek, zei Stephen Doig onlangs, is zoiets als “social science done on deadline”. Niet ten onrechte, immers het aantal sociale en economische data dat zich voor die vorm van journalistiek leent neemt exponentieel toe. Bovendien is het gereedschap nodig voor analyse en visualisaties ruim voor handen. Een spreadsheetprogramma als Microsoft Excel is een van de standaarden. Dat ligt voor de hand. Je hoeft niets te installeren want Office staat meestal toch wel op je machine, omdat Word de meest gebruikte tekstverwerker is. Het werkt ook wel handig; een toptien, percentageverschil of een(draai)tabel zijn met enige moeite te maken. En als je wat dieper in je data wilt duiken is er altijd nog SPSS(Statistical Package Social Sciences). Toch denk ik dat er vijf goede redenen zijn om te besluiten R-project te gebruiken voor datajournalistiek. Gregor Aisch, Open Knowledge Foundation, zegt in het Data Journalism Handbook: “It is hard to find any visualization method or data wrangling technique that is not already built into R. R is a universe in its own, the mecca of visual data analysis. …Trained data journalists can use R to analyze huge dataset which extends the limits of Excel”.

Gepubliceerd op: De Nieuwe Reporter: http://www.denieuwereporter.nl/2014/04/vijf-redenen-om-r-te-gebruiken-in-datajournalistiek/ 
and in English on Memeburn: http://memeburn.com/2014/05/5-compelling-arguments-for-using-r-in-data-journalism/ 

Data journalism is changing the way we report elections: here’s how

Whenever there’s an election in any democratic country, its — and sometimes the world’s media — goes tends to be put on full alert. That said, traditional reporting is generally limited to the political issues in the campaign and to winners and losers. Data journalism tools open a new perspective, offering the possibility for in-depth reporting and analysis.

As renowned professor of journalism Stephen Doig notes, data journalism is something like “social science done on deadline”. As is the case with social sciences, the tools of online journalism are generally freely available online and aren’t so difficult to use. While they can seem a little daunting, when paired with a little bit of training these tools are helping change the way we report on elections.
Published at Memeburn: http://memeburn.com/2014/04/data-journalism-is-changing-the-way-we-report-elections-heres-how/

Deep into R

Statistics gemeente data using R Studio.

AUTOMATED JOURNALISM

Writing a one column news story with the W's – Who, What, Where – is for most journalists just routine. These news stories are not long and are written using a fixed template. You could use this template again; just replace the data for a new story. Can you teach this trick to a computer? Writing by the computer is a matter of using a good algorithm; using certain words in sentences in the paragraph order of the news article. However you have add the data yourself, unless these data come also from a computer.

Published Memeburn: http://memeburn.com/2014/03/what-a-californian-earthquake-can-teach-us-about-the-future-of-journalism/

GIS Server

After 2 weeks I got a QGIS mapserver running on Ubuntu LAMP using Lizmap as a webclient.
First the map in the QGIS desktop:

And here is the map on the server:

African Story Challenge

The Story Challenge is a project by the African Media Initiative (AMI), the continent’s largest association of media owners and operators, in partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).
Email: info@africanstorychallenge.com
Facebook: AfricanStoryChallenge
Twitter: @StoryChallenge
Google Plus: African Story Challenge Community
Tel: +254 788 279 091

tweepsmap

View Peter_Verweij's profile on TweepsMap

From the African Story Challenge

"Even veteran journalists must embrace new technologies," says Zimbabwean journalist Gibbs Dube.
Technology is opening up new frontiers in storytelling

Some experts do not need a whole lecture room to impart knowledge to students. Today I can proudly boast that I can scrap some data from websites to generate interesting content for radio listeners, television viewers and newspaper readers.

Makoko: the unique floating community whose days may be numbered

Residents of Makoko, Lagos’s shanty-town on stilts, face an uncertain future as they are caught between preserving their life on the sea and finding a better future for their children.

 A new floating school, built with foreign aid, offers the chance of education to Makoko’s youth. But the government initially prevented it from opening as it wants the residents moved to higher ground.