Gapminder.com

I recently found a fascinating website I'd never heard of before called Gapminder, which offers the beautiful tag line of "Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view". It's a non-profit initiative founded in 2005 to develop a program named "Trendalyzer" and provide accurate statistical information about world development trends. Unsurprisingly, it was acquired by Google in 2007.
The actual interface is a little confusing at first, for someone without much experience with statistics, but offers really comprehensive help and tutorials. The difficulties I had at first were simply due to the huge amounts of data and interactivity. At the time of writing, it offered world statistics for 430 indicators, including aid received, rates of teenage pregnancy and life expectancy, which can all be graphed on separate axes. These graphs can then be played to show development over time. It is really quite a beautiful way to visualise and make comprehensible world statistics. It also offers help and suggestions for teachers who want to make use of the website.
I really love this side of the web, the idea that information is power, and everyone's birthright. Which is probably the reason I'm studying to be a librarian.


http://www.gapminder.org/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2011420124_hans_rosling_to_reveal_zen_of.html

Digg

Digg is a web 2.0 application with the sole purpose of tracking and suggesting items that are popular on the web. In terms of usability, it's beautifully simple, allowing users to nominate articles and stories, which other users can "digg". Articles with high amounts of diggs are displayed prominently on the site. The site also allows you to follow other member's diggs and comment on articles.
On of the core strategies that Digg seems to be using is interoperability and open-standards. They recently released an update allowing Facebook users to log in and use the service immediately, a move which increased new user registration by 20-30%. They are currently working to do the same for Google and Yahoo accounts. This is an ambitious move, but also a highly logical one. While all these services offer the ability to share stories, they do not socially rank them in any way. Therefore, Digg has something different to offer these services. And by making the service exceptionally easy to access for anyone who uses any of the major social networking API's, they dramatically increase their appeal.
Peter Cashmore has written a really interesting editorial on Digg, where he talks about the rise of content curation. Because new information is being created at such a massive rate, sites like Digg help users to find content they are actually interested in, and filter out the rest.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/18/cashmore.digg/index.html

Foursquare

Foursquare is an interesting mash-up of location-based networking site, game and mobile application. Users "check in" at venues like restaurants, bars, offices or even their own home. The service notifies your friends where you are. The focus seems to be on helping people share their favourite spots and discover new ones in their given city. The website describes itself as an "urban mix tape". Checking in at various spots can earn users "badges". Visiting a spot more than anyone else will make you "Mayor" of that place. Many businesses are offering incentives like free food and drinks or discounts if you are the Mayor at that venue. Users can also add tips and advice about various venues, which are accessible when you log in.
Foursquare makes use of mobile technologies geolocation abilities in order to gather data about user's habits and favourite haunts. This simple, implicit method of gathering data is complimented by the encouragement of more explicit contributions by users by offering rewards in the form of badges and titles.
Of course, the site's usefulness is entirely dependent on its users. The more people checking in and placing tips at various sites, the more people will be inclined to use the system. Most of the tips and comments about venues seem to be available via http://fourwhere.com/, which does not require registration or log in. I can certainly see the attraction of a service that can recommend a restaurant or bar in the area. There are tips on favourite menu items, the kind of vibe of a venue, warnings for vegans.
In many ways I really like the idea of the site. Its kind of like a global grapevine, and I can see it being really helpful for small businesses who are doing really great things, but don't have the capital for advertising. Foursquare are also planning to release free analytics software for small businesses, so they can easily track their traffic and the information posted about their business. It will also allow business owners the ability to communicate directly with their customers via twitter. Users do have the option to keep their information private, thankfully.
However, what I find fascinating, and kind of disconcerting, is the use of badges as incentives. Are we so hungry for recognition and approval that people can be motivated by a .gif file? Maybe so.

Haiku
Broadcast where you are
every moment of the day
Win a fab new badge

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/foursquare-introduces-new-tools-for-businesses/
http://foursquare.com/learn_more

Last.fm

So this week we're talking about "harnessing collective intelligence", meaning using a web application's users to enable it to develop and grow. Users can contribute in an explicit sense by directly adding or altering content, or implicitly by their day to day use of the application.
Last.fm makes strong use of this on multiple levels. Last.fm is an internet radio site that builds a profile of the music a user listens to via a lightweight plugin, whether through radio stations, portable devices or computers, and recommends new music based on the listening preferences of others. By simply listening to music with the plugin installed, users are contributing data to Last.fm's "scrobbled" database. The site automatically generates pages for new artists once a user has listened to them. Users are constantly contributing implicitly to the database and site. The site also tracks popularity of artists and songs by the amount of times they are listened to.
The site also makes use of explicit contributions by users in the form of tags, videos and events. Users can also personalise their pages with avatars and personal information, as well as being able to embed their "recently listened to" tracks into sites such as Facebook and blogs.
The thing that strikes me about Last.fm is that it encourages user participation by allowing users who are passionate about music to connect with others. While Last.fm offers the ability to connect with people with similar taste in music all over the world, as well as to discover new music through recommendations and communities, I think a lot of the drive for people who contribute explicitly is to tell everyone how much better my taste is than yours. The Shoutbox on the page for the Melvins, one of my favourite bands, is a long stream of abuse between the band's fans and people who hate their music, but somehow feel the need to tell fans that they have terrible taste.
Photo from Flickr.

Haiku

Thirty million-odd
Hipsters waiting to tell you
How bad your taste is.