Very interesting data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I may get the raw data myself and see what other interesting data relationships can be found. It would be interesting to see the same data set plotted using small multiples or look at a longer data series and create cycle plots.
Disclaimer: I did not create this data set and data visualization. Any conclusions are purely subjective.
Robert Scoble, aka Scobleizer, released his interview of Faizan Buzdar today and his live use of their soon to be launched product, Convofy.com
What is Convofy? It is an enterprise communication tool. They are calling it a private social network for business. It is so much more. They recently launched a teaser video. Watch it to get a better idea of this tool.
Now that you have seen the teaser video, watch the 44 minute Scoble video to get a view of this tool. Faizan Buzdar does a live demo with fellow Scrybe employee Sabika Nazim. It truly is impressive.
While I watched the interview/demo I was thinking of all the projects I worked on in the past and how much better the process would be with this tool. After watching go through the projects you have worked on. I expect you will agree.
This product really speaks for itself.
I will be signing up on launch day which is April 1, 2011.
Meet Meetzi.com - An in-meeting management tool that helps make your meetings more focused, actionable, and on time.
I have been testing this new web app and I like it. It is simple and easy to use. The Meetzi team has a YouTube page at http://www.youtube.com/meetzicom and you can see their demo video there.
I strongly suggest you just goto their site, sign up and start using this web app today.
@dmgerbino
(Source: wirevibe.com)
Changing banking consumer preferences demand that banks evolve
BANK 2.0: How Customer Behavior and Technology will Change the Future of Financial Services, by Brett King, Marshall Cavendish/Business, 397 pp., 2010
The preface to Brett King’s new book, BANK 2.0: How Customer Behavior and Technology will Change the Future of Financial Services, begins: “A staggering 90 per cent of daily transactions are executed electronically today. Institutions that hold on to the belief that physical branches remain at the core of what the brand does, will not adapt easily to the customer of tomorrow who rarely visits a branch or the customer who sees no need for an over-the-counter transaction with cash or cheques. Those who still classify the Internet, ATM and iPhone applications as ‘alternative’ channels will be playing catch up for the next decade, while intermediaries will increasingly capture niche service opportunities. This is where BANK 2.0 starts.”
The author is direct and to the point.
The second paragraph begins “Let us be clear. This book is not for traditional bankers who want to stick to the status quo.”
Brett King raises the bar very high for this book. At 397 pages, he delivers. My Twitter- style review (140 characters or less) of this book is:
“If you are a banker, buy @BrettKing ‘s book BANK 2.0 - http://amzn.to/a781Ex ”
But now on to more specifics.
The rest of my review can by found at the ABA Banking Journal website.
The full article was posted on July 29, 2010, on the website of ABA Banking Journal, www.ababj.com, and is copyright 2010 by the American Bankers Association.
The New York Times is known for its good use of data visualization. It is also known for its bad uses as well ( see my blog post from September 8, 2009 ).
The May 7, 2010 New York Times article, “British Parties Jockey to Form Governing Alliance,” by John F. Burns had an impressive use of data visualization. The following chart utilized Stephen Few’s Bullet Graph technique to describe Parliament election results.
Stephen Few developed the bullet graph specifically for use in business dashboards as a means to solve the data visualization problems caused by gauges and meters. Since that time, his original specification and use case has been expanded. His website maintains the bullet graph specification document. He last updated his specification in March 2010. In its simplest form, a bullet chart is a bar chart inside another bar chart. This binomial comparison works very well for visually analyzing the results of the British parliamentary election results. At a glance, each bullet graph easily compares the new parliament vs the outgoing parliament seats in four categories. It is easy to see the labour party lost seats, the conservatives gained seats and that the liberal democrats and other parties basically maintained their seats. The graph also has a vertical line representing the number of seats needed to gain a majority. This is another part of the bullet graph specification used for encoding a comparative measure. In this case, the point where a majority is achieved. With this added element it is easy to see the labour party lost its majority and that the conservatives came very close to getting a majority.
Conclusion: The use of a dashboard graph type by the New York Times added simple clarity to the data in the underlying story. This is an example of data visualization done right.
For further information I strongly urge you to read the full bullet graph specification. The image below is from the latest version with all components identified.
@dmgerbino
EagerEyes makes an interesting point on his post from a week ago. He struggled looking for information while using a corporate website. I agree with most of what he is saying. When corporations publish websites, they need to know who there audience is. If they intend to communicate to multiple audiences, i.e. customers, vendors, shareholders, etc., companies should default their websites to the most common use. At least that is my opinion. Here is what EagerEyes, Assistant Professor Robert Kosara, has to say about the subject.
I was looking for Kaiser Fung’s Numbers Rule Your World on Amazon, and saw that there was no Kindle version. So I figured I’d check with the publisher, McGraw-Hill, if there was perhaps some other kind of e-book (like O’Reilly has for most of its titles).
Googling for the name McGraw-Hill… click here for the rest of the post
Thursday, 11 March 2010 - BBC News
About 24,000 clients of HSBC’s private banking operation in Switzerland had personal details stolen by a former employee, the company has admitted.
In December, HSBC said that just 10 account holders were affected by the theft, which happened three years ago.
The information stolen concerns 15,000 accounts that are still active. Another 9,000 accounts have been closed since the theft.
HSBC says that it does not think the data can be used to access accounts.
Read the rest at the BBC News.
After reading this article I was simply amazed. HSBC first learned of the breach in December 2008. That’s 2008! And, it took prosecutors to let them know how bad it really was. If you would like to read more about this story, follow this Google link for “HSBC Data Breach.”
Jolie O’Dell’s December 14, 2009 ReadWriteWeb article starts: “A recently released Google Labs product called Fusion Tables allowed users to grab data from spreadsheets, text documents, PDFs and other sources and create compelling, comprehensive visualizations from a merged data set.”
This announcement ushers in a new era where a SQL like language allows analysts to create new types of data visualizations that will lead to dynamic interpretations of data sets that was not easily possible before. It even incorporates the ability for groups to work on data sets.
This is an exciting announcement from Google.
@dmgerbino
This Mashable.com post from October 13 features a plethora of Word of Mouth Marketing tools. I currently use many of them and this handy resource gives me a few new ones to test. My favorite two tools are Google Alerts and Hootsuite. Every marketer, business owner, sales person, etc. should investigate as many of these tools as possible. Also, do not forget Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing Bible - Word of Mouth Marketing - How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Revised Edition.
Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency, Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter.
By now, most consumer marketers…
Ron Shevlin rips apart customer advocacy measurement and adds his opinion as to what information should be captured. This is a good topic for discussion. I hope you comment and discuss as did I.
I look forward to reading your comments on Ron’s Marketing Tea Party blog.
