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SA Hacks List gets an update
A couple of years ago I started a small project to collect the Twitter handles of South African journalists. That first iteration was done using a Google spreadsheet but it quickly got complicated....
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Budget 2014 word cloud
Just for fun I decided to make a word cloud out of finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s 2014 budget speech. Created using Wordle
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Setting PDF data free with Tabula
This week I spent some time working on an education project I have been dabbling with for a few weeks. Inevitably I eventually hit the PDF wall. The only place to get the extra data I needed to move...
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Oscar Pistorius: day 11 morning session in words
We’re into the 11th day of the Oscar Pistorius murder trial and during a particularly long, drawn out pre-lunch session I was messing around with the a large collection of tweets from the morning’s...
View ArticleNkandla vs. Oscar Pistorius in tweets
Earlier this week I put together a small set of scripts to track the amount of attention the Oscar Pistorius trial was getting in Twitter. With not only local but also international audiences keen to...
View ArticleLearning curves, and graphs
I’m rather pleased with this interactive graph, not because it’s particularly good but because it’s my first foray into D3.js. Over the past few months I’ve been doing a lot of data-based work and...
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Easy map visualisations with Mapstarter
In the world of data visualisation d3.js is the toolset of choice for most interactive journalists. But D3 also comes with a steep learning curve that makes it relatively inaccessible to the average...
View ArticleInstagramming the city
As part of some testing earlier today I was playing around with Instagram. I’ve never been a heavy user of Instagram but I was looking setting up an account for our newsroom. Along the way I got...
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Hacking education data: a school finder
Earlier this year, as part of another project, I downloaded the South Africa education department’s list of schools. At the same time I had a copy of the 2013 matric results for all public schools (at...
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Media Picks #1
We’re nearing the end of 2014 at a rapid pace. So what better way to kick off the almost-holidays than with a new little side project? I’ve been failing dismally at maintaining my blog this past year...
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Missed Media Picks #1? Check out the archives. Podcasting is apparently back and there are dozens of excellent podcasts you ought to be listening to (this american life, serial, startup, radiolab, all...
View ArticleMedia Picks #3
With the end of the year in sight retrospectives and predictions abound, headed up by Nieman Labs’ Predictions for Journalism for 2015. If you haven’t already checked this out it is definitely worth...
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(New) Adventures in Ubuntu
There was a time I was a Linux and free software evangelist. Over the past few years, however, work and life have conspired to make me a Windows user, albeit a reluctant one. A few weeks ago I bought a...
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Media Picks #4 – Lean journalism, cooking up an app storm, suggestive headlines
Subscribe to get the weekly Media Picks email newsletter in your inbox. Missed previous Media Picks editions? View the archives. For many of us the new year is the traditional time to be re-evaluating...
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Media Picks #5 – Smart journalism, crowdfunding, online video and data...
Media Picks #5 – 16 January 2015 Subscribe to get the weekly Media Picks email newsletter in your inbox. Missed previous Media Picks editions? View the archives. Smart move: Australian news site...
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Media Picks #6 – Integrated newsrooms, recycling news, and latte art with a...
Media Picks #6 – 23 January 2015 Subscribe to get the weekly Media Picks email newsletter in your inbox. Missed previous Media Picks editions? View the archives. In case you’re ever on the other side...
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Media Picks #7 – Automated news, fixing news hyperlinks and radical designs
Subscribe to get the weekly Media Picks email newsletter in your inbox. Missed previous Media Picks editions? View the archives. Robot journalism: AP’s automated company reports are giving journalists...
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Media Picks #8 – Killing comments, the real value of paywalls and tips from...
Media Picks #8 – 6 February 2015 Subscribe to get the weekly Media Picks email newsletter in your inbox. Missed previous Media Picks editions? View the archives. It’s Friday, so why don’t we start...
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Media Picks #9 – No home pages, the end of Twitter buttons, FTW!
Media Picks #9 – 13 February 2015 Subscribe to get the weekly Media Picks email newsletter in your inbox. Missed previous Media Picks editions? View the archives. The news site with no site: NowThis...
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