January 2015 Summaries

Welcome Aurelia` Join us in welcoming our latest cartographer Aurelia Moser to the CartoDB team in New York City. Aurelia is a librarian developer and cartographer who builds communities around code through education and outreach, and has recently completed a fellowship that took her traveling around the world speaking at conferences and hackathons. She is passionate about open data cybersecurity and privacy hacking-for-good and code, and is an active member of the NYC meetup community where she develops curricula for Girl Develop It NYC and co-organizes a meetup for developers to program robots with Node.js. Originally from the Midwest, Aurelia has experience teaching in France before returning to NYC five years ago. She believes maps are one of the most intuitive types of visualizations due to their ability to reconcile physical and digital worlds, and enjoys making lists and using project management tools such as thenews.im, reporter, task warrior, and the point.

CartoDB is participating in the American Museum of Natural History's Educator's Evening on January 30, highlighting its potential as a tool for students to explore and visualize data. The platform's flexible interface, visually stunning graphics, and ease of use make it an attractive addition to classrooms. Recently, New York City high school students used CartoDB to analyze the impacts of climate change and Hurricane Sandy on their city, developing critical thinking skills and gaining a new interest in cartography. The project allowed students to create engaging maps that told stories with data, fostering discussion and analysis. CartoDB's power as a tool for map making in the classroom was demonstrated through the students' projects, which showcased their ability to think critically about data visualization.

The open data movement is gaining momentum, with cities around the world making their municipal data available online. To facilitate this, OpenData.City has integrated its platform with CartoDB, a geospatial mapping service. This integration aims to make it easier for city officials to create useful maps and publish datasets, using a user-friendly interface that streamlines the process of setting up and running an open data portal.

The CartoDB team has created an interactive map, the Rat Race Map, which showcases conservation efforts in the Galapagos archipelago to eradicate invasive species. The map was inspired by a Nature article and features annotation styling that allows users to add text information directly related to specific geographic locations on the map. This feature enables versatile labeling capabilities that can be customized through CartoDB's built-in styling interface, which offers various options such as text color, orientation, size, bounding box, and more. The map serves as an example of how CartoDB can be used in journalism planning and information design, allowing users to create engaging stories and data visualizations.

The State of the Union Address delivered by President Barack Obama marked a new era of openness, with the speech text made available in full ahead of time. The address covered various key topics including economy, healthcare, education, environment, equal opportunity, and women's rights, with maps created by community members to visualize these issues. These maps provide an interesting perspective on the themes discussed during the speech, such as changing job opportunities, rising healthcare access, and environmental commitments. The State of the Union address has a rich history, with datasets and data science related content available for exploration.

Named Maps API allows users to create dynamic visualizations from private data, enabling filtering and modification capabilities while maintaining security. The API provides a way to define parameters that can be used in SQL and CartoCSS to change visualizations on the fly, allowing for interactive maps with secure data. This feature enables users to pass parameters to filter data or redefine designs based on user interactions without exposing sensitive information. The Named Maps API is designed to provide an easy-to-use solution for creating dynamic maps from secure data, making it easier for users to create interactive and secure visualizations.

The visualization, "A River Runs Toward It", is an interactive map of the U.S. topography created using CartoDB's vector map technology and sourced from U.S. Government satellite data. The map showcases every American river based on its direction of flow, with colors corresponding to each river's direction. This interactive map was inspired by a blog post about DIY mapping and uses open-source tools to convert shape files into web maps. The project demonstrates the use of open data and open-source software, such as CartoDB and Nelson Minar's tutorial project, to create visually striking and informative maps.

We're pleased to welcome Francisco Dans, a freelance developer with map design background, to the CartoDB team. He's working on Torque.js, a library for rendering big timeseries data in the browser. With experience in mapping companies and an active involvement in the OSM community since 2012, Fran brings valuable expertise to his new role. As part of his work, he'll be animating bubbles with Torque.js, and CartoDB has ambitious plans for its development this year. Outside of work, Fran is a petrolhead who enjoys motorbikes and might even get a proper driving license this year. His progress and other projects can be followed on GitHub and Twitter.

KimonoLabs has partnered with CartoDB to create an interactive map of Citi Bike bike sharing program data from New York City, showcasing how to turn a website into an API using Kimono's tools. The process involves creating an API from the scraped data, extracting relevant information, and then mapping it onto a CartoDB map. With CartoDB's advanced features, users can create interactive maps, such as animated routes and heatmaps, by utilizing filter functions that enable them to write custom JavaScript code to process the data. The partnership aims to empower users with the tools to build their own data-driven maps, making data more accessible and tangible.

Varun Adibhatla, a master's student at New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress, embarked on an adventure to visualize the epic New York Century Bike Tour using data from his iPhone. With the help of SensorLog, he collected 45 miles of "bumpiness" data, which he analyzed by isolating acceleration values to calculate a measure of bumpiness. Using CartoDB, Varun created an interactive visualization that conveyed the level of bumpiness across different areas of the bike ride, making it easier for riders to experience the terrain. His project was recognized at NYU's Data Service GIS Day, and he successfully mapped "bumpiness in NYC" using a Stamen base-map with animation.