Came across this awesome new weather forecasting site that really lets the visualization geek get intimate with the weather forecast. WeatherSpark is in beta and uses historical weather to predict the weather going forward, offering not only a map, but charts to boot! Check it out.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill by the numbers. This event is on track to be the worst oil disaster ever. Will this be the end of oil?
Full article at Fast Company.
Ever wondered which states had the worst budget deficit problem? The Wall Street Journal recently compiled data and produced a visualization showing each state’s budget gap. While California is taking the lead (no surprise there), I was surprised to see the deficit gaps the largest in the most populated states. It almost hints at the problem of maintaining a growing population, but then if the population is growing, so are tax revenues. So what’s the problem? I won’t go there but the graph is fascinating!
Check it out: Wall Street Journal State Budget Gaps
Seems like every time I surf the net, I am always finding new visualizations and info-graphics that someone created to illustrate some obscure part of our lives.
January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report
February 25th, 2010 | Comments are closedFor this month%u2019s feature section, we ran an opt-in survey of consumers on iPhone, iPod touch, Android and webOS devices to learn more about how they are engaging and interacting with applications. The behavioral and demographic insights taken from the self reported survey provide additional context to the traffic trends we report on each month. The survey included 963 respondents across all of the platforms and revealed some interesting points on app purchasing habits:
- Android and iPhone users download a similar number of apps every month and spend a similar amount of time using the apps.
- iPod touch users download an average of 12 apps a month, 37% more apps than iPhone and Android users.
- webOS users downloaded fewer total apps per month, relative to iPhone OS users and Android users. This may be related to the fewer number of apps in the webOS App Catalog.
As always, it%u2019s important to take methodology into consideration when reviewing the results of any survey. You can find more details on our methodology in page 3 of the report. One thing to note is that many of the survey respondents were sourced through in-app ads, which could have resulted in a selection bias of active app users. Also note that we did not include RIM users in the survey, because AdMob does not currently serve ads into Blackberry apps and we wanted to be able to compare similar methodologies across platforms.
You can find all of the data from the previous survey here or download the July 2009 Metrics reports for the highlights.
Email your comments on the report to metrics@admob.com.
Harsh Shah
harsh
File under: Uncategorized
Statistics for mobile users is in for January 2010! Interesting trends arise… Did you know the iPod Touch is heavily used by the 17 and younger crowd? Download the full report for details!
Metrics are the individual numbers that relate to other numbers that tell a story. Often, these are the numbers that people of all levels of the company use to make decisions.
If a company has a firm grasp of their metrics, fully understand their engine, and have reporting in the right places, there can be some pretty impressive looking dashboards available that tell the health of business at a glance.
However, those fabulous looking metrics and dashboards might be completely meaningless if the there is a broken link between the customer touch point and the data server. As companies grow, data grows exponentially and marketing landing pages pile up on the server, there is more and more potential for something to break. Undetected breakage can kill a company!
The best way to resolve this is to assume that the entire system is broken and one must test, test, and test again. Keeping records at the major data transfer points is one way to keep track of records dropping out and why. Doing routine quality checks on the data is also a way to keep confidence levels up.
Knowing the data, the trends, and the engine is a great way to detect breakage. If sales from search take a dive and they have been consistent for the past three years, maybe something broke… maybe your campaigns need a refresh. A good analyst usually has great instinct on the issues.
Patience in drilling down, slicing and dicing, and becoming intiment with your data is the only way to understand it, make sure it works, and that the story is non-fiction as opposed to some strange, poorly written fiction novel.
How confident are you in your metrics? Is it fiction or non-fiction?
When I saw this article by Medical News Today, I did a classic double take of the headline:
When I talk about patterns and collecting data, finding new, cheap, and creative sources of data is often what separates the truly remarkable from the ordinary research projects. Conducting brain injury sympton research via YouTube’s “funny” videos is certain a cheap and creative way to help save someone from sustaining further injuries:
“Their findings could have immediate value in helping coaches make educated, objective decisions about whether to return an athlete to play after a blow to the head.”
You can read the rest of the article at the headline above.
This is further proof that social media has a growing value, not just in terms of marketing, sales and collaboration, but in helping our society make smarter decisions. Since patterns, creativity, inspiration and data are four of my lenses, I might start taking another look at Twitter; not as a marketing tool, but as a resource for learning more about human behavior patterns.
Cheers!
Aric Monts-Homkey 