A long time ago in an Internet culture far, far from where we are now, it was normal to use a handle online. As the founder of a Macintosh enthusiast webzine (remember those?), I was known as MacDiva. People liked the name: It was catchy, meaningful and easy to remember.
In 2007, like many of you, I discovered Twitter. That same year, I joined the Online News Association conference planning committee with the intention of sharing what was happening with as many people as possible, even if they couldn’t be there in person.
At the time, I couldn’t post to the conference website; that was reserved as the showcase for the student newsroom. I couldn’t post to the ONA website; that would have presented problems of its own. So I turned to Twitter, created @MacDivaONA and began recording what I saw.
I’ve been involved with the ONA conference planning board ever since, experimenting with different ways of bringing a virtual version of the annual event to anyone who wants to be a part of it.
The conference isn’t the only time I use Twitter, though, and ONA isn’t the only organization I’m actively involved with. And as Jennifer 8. Lee recently pointed out, people who don’t know my IRL name often do know me as MacDiva — though they don’t always remember the ONA ending.
So now that there’s a brief lull between journalism and technical events, I’m simplifying — for all of our sakes: On Twitter, I’m now @MacDiva.
Have you recently decided to change your online name? What urged you to action? Share right here, or ping me @MacDiva.
CAR 2011 was stuffed full of information, so much so that the only way to keep up with everything has been to keep a log of what people have been sharing.
Feb. 28 update: Thanks to everyone who’s forwarded additional links and presentations (I’m marking them with NEW as they’re added) and to all who’ve sent me nice notes about this list.
This year’s conference looks to have been a tremendous success, bringing in the most registered attendees in nearly a decade. Congratulations to NICAR for a terrific, educational and inspiring event.
A more narrative look at what happened at the conference can be found on the conference blog. But if you’re anxious to dive in, this is your buffet: Prepare to have your mind blown.
Got links from sessions you attended? Post them in comments or ping me on Twitter @MacDiva and I’ll add them to this list.
• 3Scale – API management and monetization tool (free trial)
• API Playground – try APIs, no coding skills necessary
• Backbone.js adds a models-collections-views structure to JavaScript applications
• BatchGeo interactive map maker
• Biznar.com – business search engine
• CanIUse.com browser compatibility tables
• Census Block Conversions API
• ChangeTracker from ProPublica – track changes to any website
• ChinaVitae – learn who’s who in power in China
• CollegeInsight – compare universities by cost, financial aid, diversity, job placement rate
• DataWrangler cleans and transforms data
• Download manager downTHEMall is a FireFox extension that grabs webpage links and images.
• Europe Media Monitor’s NewsBrief – an international alternative to Google News
• EUROCONTROL – “find blocked private planes that might have flown to Europe, for example: see which executives are going to Cannes”
• FCC Census Block Conversions API – boundary service API, excellent for mapping
• The FireShot FireFox extension creates browser screenshots, adds annotation and more.
• Foreign Labor Certification Data Center – find what visas a company has applied for (there may be wage information tied to the application)
• Get Lat Lon – finds latitude and longitude for any location worldwide
• Free Google Drawings wireframe templates
• Google Fusion Tables for data analysis and visualization
• Google Refine for data cleaning
• Inmarsat Ships Directory – lookup a ship’s phone number
• JSFiddle online JavaScript editor
• Jigsaw: “Visual analytics for exploring and understanding document collections”
• Little Sis – visualizing the networks of social, financial and political power
• MarineTraffic.com – track vessels in real time
• Mayan open source, Django-based document manager
• Mr. Data Converter converts Excel data into web-friendly formats
• Needlebase
• NETROnline – public records search, especially good for real property lookups
• NodeXL uses Excel for network analysis
• NodeXL Teaching lessons and tutorials
• Numberway.com – lookup phone numbers around the world
• Outwit Hub – FireFox plugin for scraping websites
• PDFonFly – converts web pages to PDFs
• PhraseNet diagrams relationships between words in text
• PostGIS – adds mapping ability to PostgreSQL
• PrivacyChoice – rates website privacy policies
• Protovis
• PySAL an open source Python library for spatial analysis functions
• R statistical analysis software
R libraries recommended by Amanda Cox, Jeff Larson and others: ggplot, RColorBrewer (color picker), rgdal (bindings for GDAL – the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library), survival (survival analysis)
• Recorded Future – temporal analysis search engine uses predictive analytics to discover the likelihood of events in the future
• RSRuby – use the R environment in your Ruby program
• Rubular – test your regex on the fly
• Simile Timeline
• Scraper Wiki
• Snitch.Name – people lookup
• Tableau Public
• TimeFlow
• TinEye finds information on uploaded images, including usage, higher resolutions, modified versions
• Tweeql access the Twitter API by using SQL syntax (requires Python)
• TwitInfo chart Twitter keyword frequency and sentiment
• USA Spending – see what the US government is spending money on
by James A. Davis (recommended by Philip Meyer)
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