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4 Simple Tools for Creating an Infographic Resume

2011-10-15T21:31:36Z

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

As a freelancer or job seeker, it is important to have a resume that stands out among the rest — one of the more visually pleasing options on the market today is the infographic resume.

An infographic resume enables a job seeker to better visualize his or her career history, education and skills.

Unfortunately, not everyone is a graphic designer, and whipping up a professional-looking infographic resume can be a difficult task for the technically unskilled job seeker. For those of us not talented in design, it can also be costly to hire an experienced designer to toil over a career-centric infographic.

Luckily, a number of companies are picking up on this growing trend and building apps to enable the average job seeker to create a beautiful resume.

To spruce up your resume, check out these four tools for creating an infographic CV. If you’ve seen other tools on the market, let us know about them in the comments below.

1. Vizualize.me

Vizualize.me is a new app that turns a user’s LinkedIn profile information into a beautiful, web-based infographic.

After creating an account and connecting via LinkedIn, a user can edit his or her profile summary, work experience, education, links, skills, interests, languages, stats, recommendations and awards. And voila, a stunning infographic is created.

The company’s vision is to “be the future of resumes.” Lofty goal, but completely viable, given that its iteration of the resume is much more compelling than the simple, black-and-white paper version that currently rules the world.

2. Re.vu

Re.vu, a newer name on the market, is another app that enables a user to pull in and edit his or her LinkedIn data to produce a stylish web-based infographic.

The infographic layout focuses on the user’s name, title, biography, social links and career timeline — it also enables a user to add more graphics, including stats, skill evolution, proficiencies, quotes and interests over time.

Besides the career timeline that is fully generated via the LinkedIn connection, the other graphics can be a bit tedious to create, as all of the details must be entered manually.

In the end, though, a very attractive infographic resume emerges. This is, by far, the most visually pleasing option of all of the apps we reviewed.

3. Kinzaa

Based on a user’s imported LinkedIn data, Kinzaa creates a data-driven infographic resume that focuses on a user’s skills and job responsibilities throughout his or her work history.

The tool is still in beta, so it can be a bit wonky at times — but if you’re looking for a tool that helps outline exactly how you’ve divided your time in previous positions, this may be your tool of choice.

Unlike other tools, it also features a section outlining the user’s personality and work environment preferences. Details such as preferences on company size, job security, challenge level, culture, decision-making speed and more are outlined in the personality section, while the work environment section focuses on the user’s work-day length, team size, noise level, dress code and travel preferences.

4. Brazen Careerist Facebook App

Brazen Careerist, the career management resource for young professionals, launched a new Facebook application in September that generates an infographic resume from a user’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn information.

After a user authorizes the app to access his or her Facebook and LinkedIn data, the app creates an infographic resume with a unique URL — for example, my infographic resume is located at brazen.me/u/ericaswallow.

The infographic features a user’s honors, years of experience, recommendations, network reach, degree information, specialty keywords, career timeline, social links and LinkedIn profile image.

The app also creates a “Career Portfolio” section which features badges awarded based on a user’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn achievements. Upon signing up for the app, I earned eight badges, including “social media ninja,” “team player” and “CEO in training.” While badges are a nice addition, they aren’t compelling enough to keep me coming back to the app.

Your Thoughts

Have you used a web app to create an infographic resume? If so, which tool did you use and how was your experience? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, SchulteProductions

More About: features, infographic, jobs, mashable, resumes

Are Facebook ID Cards In Our Future?

2011-10-16T05:20:51Z

Facebook has filed for a trademark on the usage of “Facebook” on business cards and, more curiously, “non-magnetically encoded” ID cards among other things. If granted the trademark would protect using the word Facebook in the specified formats, not any actual invention.

So what if Facebook just wants to stop people from making fake Facebook business cards? Well, it seems like this trademark would cover that and a whole lot more including “business card and identity card design services,” “printing services” and the ominous, “facilitating social and business networking through the provision of data for use on its own business and identity cards.”

It also looks like the trademark would cover QR code and NFC/RFID uses — which work through magnetic induction, NOT the aforementioned magnetic encoding — much like the Presence cards and photobooths that allowed you to upload and tag photos at F8 (see left).

It’s easy to envision some sort of master Facebook plan where Facebook would give users a cheap physical ID that could be read by smart readers and used for a variety of practical purposes. When asked, people familiar with the Facebook matter had no clue as to whether this was actually in the works. It’s also unclear how often companies like Facebook trademark something and then don’t actually take advantage of the trademark.

If Facebook were to develop some sort of physical ID system, it would be great for marketing and extremely practical; Imagine going to concerts or movies, buying tickets through Facebook and swiping through a key fob ID card.

So will Facebook play a larger role in how we manage in our offline identity in the future? Well the idea is not so far-fetched — After all, Facebook is already most dominant identity system on the Internet.

Image via: Gsharma

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A documentary about addiction to technology that could save us

2011-10-16T07:01:40Z

Filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain opens her new documentary Connected with a personal confession: She once faked having to go to the bathroom during dinner so that she could check her email on her phone. For many web-addicted people, that might not be too shocking a reveal, but for her it was a wake-up call — one that comes close to capturing Connected in a nutshell.

Connected, which is currently in limited theatrical release and will be available on DVD and digital formats in 2012, is about the evolution of human communication and how it has changed our lives, for better and for worse. It is ALSO about Shlain simultaneously coping with her scholar father’s brain cancer and pregnancy with a second child.

It is about a lot of things, which is communicated by the film’s subtitle: “An Autoblogography.” “I wanted [Autoblogography] to convey a bunch of things — that the film is autobiographical, with blogography a nod to all the technology in the film — also, the word is just so ridiculous, and shows how I want one thing to do a whole bunch of things for me. It makes me laugh,” Shlain said in a phone interview.

The decision to make the film more bloggy, Shlain said, came about after she’d been working on it for some time, but was struggling to get inspired. “I was working on a film about connectedness and wasn’t feeling connected to it,” she said. Giving the film a personal component, she felt, was the best solution.

Like many personal narratives, people react by wanting to tell their own stories, an impulse that Shlain and the Connected team have been channeling by encouraging people to visit their (extremely active) Facebook page, which has been liked by over eight thousand people so far. “People post about how it’s changing their lives, how wired we are. Everyone is hungry to talk about this subject.”

In the film, Shlain refers casually to how she and her family have instituted a weekly period of unplugging, a sort of digital shabbas that begins on Friday night — which has become, for her, how she finds balance. When we spoke, she hadn’t been able to do her weekly unplugging for three weeks due to her touring schedule with the film, and said that she felt “off-kilter” as a result.

The idea of unplugging is one communicated by a short film which played at the Guggenheim as part of the YouTube Play exhibit last year; Yelp, a digital age riff on Allen Ginsberg’s classic poem Howl, was made at the same time as Connected. In fact, the two films share animation, footage and a narrator. (E.T. star Peter Coyote — “he has the perfect rich voice of God,” Shlain said.)

There are huge ideas in Connected, and small personal touches; it simultaneously makes the case that our over-connected society can be damaging on both a personal and global level — but also looks to those same connection tools as our salvation, because acknowledging our “interdependence” creates conversations that can lead to change.

It’s a concept that can be seen in action right now with the Occupy Wall Street movement — literally, you can see it for yourself, thanks to this age of wonders we live in. You can see right now, how, in Shlain’s words, “We can all be empowered to make change in this world.”

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Hack Your Culture

2011-10-01T20:05:52Z

Editor’s note: This guest post is by Justin Kan, cofounder of Justin.tv and TwitchTV. You can follow him on Twitter here and read his blog here.

Behavior is a virus. We spread our behavior to those around us, whether passively or on purpose.

Pop quiz: what factor most highly correlates with obesity? It isn’t income, race, religion, or genetics. It turns out that the best indicator of obesity is your friend group: if you have overweight friends, you are more likely to be overweight yourself. This makes sense, because you develop your behavior set from interactions with those around you. If your friends are physically active and eat well, you’ll have more opportunities to be physically active yourself, and spend more time over healthy meals. Alternatively, if your friends are living a real-life version of Super Size Me, you’re likely on the express train to type II diabetes.

Given enough exposure to a behavior, that behavior will become normative. This is true for both positive and negative behaviors. One simple behavior I’ve seen spread through my own friend group is riding motorcycles. I first started riding a few years ago after two of my friends came by on their bikes (having wanted to start for years, but never having a catalyst until that moment). Fast forward four years and both my brothers, two roommates and many other friends are riding, with many more in various stages of taking the rider’s test and joining the organ donor’s club.

Over the past several years I’ve been surprised to learn that this is also the case for entrepreneurship. For most people, startups are a risky endeavor and something to be avoided. Many are hesitant to quit their secure jobs and try to start a company from scratch. From an expected value perspective, when factoring in some risk adversity attributable to basic human nature, they are correctly maximizing outcomes. However, for a growing group, I’ve noticed that startups are a normalized behavior, and that this generally spreads through personal connections.

My brother Daniel is the perfect example of this. When Daniel graduated from college in 2009, the economy was in a horrible recession, and it was extremely difficult for new grads to find jobs. Initially having very little interest in startups, he started doing sales and business development at Uservoice after finding no options in consulting and banking, where the few friends of his fortunate enough to find work were headed. After a couple years of being friends with founders and early employees of startups, hearing about startups everyday and rooming with startup founders, he made the jump himself and recruited a team to launch Appetizely.

An example of culture-hacking at scale is Y Combinator. One of the reasons I think Y Combinator is so powerful is because it creates a new social norm, especially for those who come from outside Silicon Valley. When you start at YC, your friends and family think you’re crazy. By the end, you have another friend cohort: other YC entrepreneurs and alumni. These new friends will provide support and advice, but the most important thing that they give you is implicit assurance that you are not crazy.

The lesson here is that through some clever social engineering you can hack your own life to put yourself in the position to accomplish goals you don’t even know how to begin. This is also also how ZeroCater started. Over three years ago I was interviewing candidates for a community manager postition at Justin.tv. One interviewee particularly stood out. Arram didn’t have any experience or really any qualifications; in fact, at the time he had been working as a security guard and had never been to college. But, unlike most of the other candidates, he had thought extensively about what he would do as the community manager and had written down his many ideas in preparation for our interview. He was also passionate about creating his own startup eventually, and his excitement was inspiring. We ended up hiring someone else who had more community management experience for the job, but I was so impressed with Arram’s preparation that we hired him anyways to do random office projects.

One of Arram’s minor responsibilities ended up being ordering meals for the company. It ended up being such a time saver for the team that one evening I suggested that he offer ordering as a service to a few other YC startups in the neighborhood. That was the last I thought about it, but a month later I was shocked when Arram came back to me and told me he was quitting to grow it as a startup. Two years later, and he’s recruited a technical team, built out software to manage the entire workflow and serve companies like MTV, CBS and Verizon.

Arram didn’t have the programming or product background that you would expect from someone who would later go on to raise over $1 million in venture capital for a technology startup. He got in the game by doing whatever it took to get into a startup and surrounded himself with startups, making it impossible for him to not think about startups. Just being in the community creates opportunities: how else would you come up with the idea for a food subscription service that solves a very specific company problem?

You can hack your own culture. Surround yourself with people who do what you want to do, and eventually you’ll wake up to find yourself doing the same.

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Person: Justin Kan

Website:

Companies: Justin.TV, Kiko, Socialcam

Justin Kan is an entrepreneur, Web developer, and the ‘Justin’ of Justin.tv. Justin.tv started when Justin Kan and Emmett Shear took on the challenge of broadcasting one person’s life 24/7. Being web developers, they recruited co-founders Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt to run the business and build a live streaming video camera. For investment, they spoke with Paul Graham of Y-Combinator (an investor in their previous start-up) and raised seed capital. The Justin.tv website launched in March of 2007....

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Company: Y Combinator

Website: ycombinator.com

Launch Date: January 4, 2005

Funding: $10.3M

Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with “good” ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...

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Even The OECD Is Noting How Dreadful Patent Quality Is Negatively Impacting Innovation

2011-09-22T10:54:32Z

Christian Tremblay points us to news of a new OECD report that agrees that falling patent quality is holding back innovation:

The quality of patent filings has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, claims a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).� The rush to protect even minor improvements in products or services is overburdening patent offices, which in turn slows the time to market for true innovations and reduces the potential for breakthrough inventions they claim.

Of course, the real way to fix this problem is to make the bar to get a patent much, much higher. If you do that, you get less bogus patent apps being submitted, and it makes it easier to reject such bogus patents. One easy way to do this would be to use independent invention as a sign of obviousness, and reject patents where multiple parties all came up with the same thing independently. Unfortunately, no one seems to seriously be considering such an option. And so we're stuck with crappy patents and a giant backlog. To date, the only way that the US has seen to get through that backlog is to approve patents faster with less scrutiny than before. Tragically, this has had the exact opposite effect of the intended response. When you approve more bad patents quickly, you only encourage even more bad patent applications.

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Facebook to Launch “Major” Profile Redesign at f8

2011-09-19T22:57:22Z

Facebook plans to roll out a major redesign of user profiles at its f8 developer conference this week, Mashable has learned.

Details about the redesign are sparse, but two sources familiar with Facebook’s plans (who have asked to remain anonymous) have told us that the redesign is “major” and will make Facebook profiles nexuses for consuming content.

The profile changes will be part of a wider launch, one that will include launch of a music and media platform.

Here’s what we know so far about the profile redesign:

The redesigned profiles will be more “sticky,” says one source. One of the goals of the new profiles is to get users to stay on them for longer.
We already knew Facebook is launching a media platform at f8. However, we’ve also learned that the platform — which will include music and video from partner sites — will display the media content a user is watching or listening to on their profiles. Essentially, when you’re listening to Lady Gaga on Spotify, your friends can see and access that on your Facebook profile. This confirms a recent New York Times report.
The redesigned profiles are part of a larger push into social ecommerce. We don’t exactly know what that means, but we’ve heard whispers that Facebook intends to give Facebook Credits more prominence. We’ve also heard that a Facebook app store may emerge at f8.
Facebook’s push into ecommerce may be related Project Spartan, an HTML5-based mobile platform rumored to be launching soon.

Facebook is being tight-lipped about the changes; the company declined to comment on this story. However, more and more pieces of Facebook’s big launch continue to leak out as the excitement builds for f8 (feel free to send us screenshots if you have any) The company is currently under lockdown, trying to fix the final bugs before Thursday’s big launch.

What do you think Facebook will launch on Thursday? Let us know in the comments.

More About: f8, Facebook

Source: Facebook To Launch Read, Listened, Watched, And Want Buttons

2011-09-19T23:06:14Z

The cat is out of the bag that Facebook is going to launch something big at its developer conference f8 this week. We’ve heard about the social music services that could be debuting in a few days, but as the New York Times conveyed this past weekend, Facebook is planning for ways to surface personal content better. And we’ve heard from a source that Facebook will introduce new buttons on the wall that will begin introducing some granularity to the “Like” concept. We’re told these new buttons are “Read,” “Listened,” “Watched.” The network will also soon launch new social commerce buttons like “Want” following the introductions of the aforementioned buttons.

It’s important to qualify that this is from a source (and not from Facebook) but from what we hear, Facebook users will be able to click Read, Listened, Watched on content in their news feed. And soon, “Want” as well.

And it’s unclear what will happen to the Like button and how these new buttons will affect the Like button. And we don’t know what Facebook will do with this data, but there is so much the network could do with the data from these buttons. It seems pretty obvious that ad targeting would be a huge opportunity as well as the capability of delivering a more personalized experience for users. Not to mention that brands, retailers, entertainment companies and other businesses will be able to gain segmented data around the Like.

If all of this is starting to sound a bit like Facebook’s infamous Beacon project, it shouldn’t be too surprising — from what we’ve heard a key part of these new Facebook features is to provide Beacon-like functionality in terms of auto-populating News Feed stories based around intent and actions. But they’ll do so without the advertising and privacy ramifications. At least for now…

The introduction of these new, granular buttons would certainly add more depth to content surfaced by media sharing apps as well as from retailers, which is in line with previous reports of what’s being launched. We’ll keep you updated on what else we hear is in the pipeline for f8 (and we know what’s not being announced: Project Spartan).

Update: Liz Gannes is reporting that the motto for f8 will be “Read. Watch. Listen.” — that sounds exactly in line with the buttons we’ve heard about.

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FACEBOOK

Company: Facebook

Website: facebook.com

Launch Date: January 2, 2004

Funding: $2.34B

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...

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Google Wallet Likely Launching Tomorrow

2011-09-18T20:39:34Z

Last week, Google posted an awesome teaser video for Google Wallet featuring George Costanza. The implication: Google Wallet would finally be launching soon. Now we think we know when: tomorrow.

As you can see in the above image, documentation is being sent around to partners stating a September 19 launch day. We’ve heard from others that this is accurate. And it also lines up nicely with NFC World Congress, which kicks off tomorrow in the French Riviera. Google is not listed as a speaker or exhibitor at the event, but their main partner MasterCard is the official sponsor.

Back in May when Google Wallet and Offers were initially unveiled, Google stated that field trials for Wallet would beging immediately and that an official launch would come this summer. Initial reports pointed towards a September 1 launch. Technically, summer lasts until September 22, so it looks like Google will hit their deadline with a few days to spare.

While this will be the official launch, the product itself will likely still be quite limited. The only officially compatible phone is the Nexus S 4G, which is only available on Sprint in the U.S. Google has an NFC sticker product to bring tap-and-pay to other phones, but it’s not clear if that will be ready at launch or not. Hardware to enable the payments on the merchant end is also needed. And again, MasterCard has been the only official partner on the credit card side of things so far. Perhaps Google will have more to say on that tomorrow. But the above documentation still points to PayPass-enabled Citi MasterCards as the only way to use the service for now.

It also makes sense for Google to get Wallet out there now before their next flagship Android phone, the Nexus Prime, launches next month. It too will have NFC capabilities built in and will bring the Wallet functionality to the much larger Verizon customer base.

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GOOGLE

Company: Google

Website: google.com

Launch Date: July 9, 1998

IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....

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Now’s the time for a Web 3.0 right to privacy

2011-09-18T13:00:13Z

As social-media sites become more prevalent and individuals share more and more details of their personal lives online, I think we need to rethink the bounds of our right to privacy. Not to regulate technology or industries — I actually think government should tread cautiously on that front — or to limit how authorities can access our information, but to protect us from each other.

Existing remedies have arguably worked well over the last century or so, but they don’t stand up very well in today’s web-centric world. By tomorrow — as I explain in a recent Long View on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d) — they’ll be obsolete.

What we call a right to privacy

Although the Constitution doesn’t expressly grant a right to privacy, court decisions and statutes have effectively created one over the years. Now there are somewhat clear limitations on how much the government can interfere with our personal lives, or where the 4th Amendment begins and ends. There are also criminal statutes that protect us against privacy violations by private citizens, such as cybercrime or actual physical intrusions of our personal space.

Often times, though, invasions of privacy merely hurt our feelings. In this case, we’re left with a collection of common law or what are called “tort” claims: intrusion upon solitude, publicity given to private life, appropriation of name or likeness, and publicity placing a person in a false light. They’re defined generally in Section 652 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (excerpted here), although every state that recognizes them probably has slightly different interpretations.

Publicity given to private life is probably the most interesting because, unlike libel or slander, truth isn’t a defense. And if you’re upset about someone publishing your private details online, that claim is probably your best bet for redress. But in the Web 3.0 era and beyond, it’s probably not enough.

The web changes everything

Our invasion of privacy tort claims were spurred in large part by an influential 1890 Harvard Law Review article by Samuel Warren and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. They were concerned that the invention of the camera, as well as more-invasive journalistic techniques, would result in undue damage to our “right to be let alone.” Newspapers represented an ideal channel for spreading idle gossip about just about anybody and publishing photos that put names and potentially embarrassing details to otherwise anonymous faces in the crowd.

The publicity-given-to-private-life claim has withstood the last century’s technological innovations, such as the television and instant cameras, but it’s antiquated in the face of the web and social media. For one, it carves out an exception for newsworthiness that’s potentially problematic in an age of citizen journalism. It also requires that the information “would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.” Finally, its requirement of publicity instead of mere publication is very limiting and written for a traditional media world. Here’s how the Restatement describes the difference:

“Publication[]” … is a word of art, which includes any communication by the defendant to a third person. “Publicity,” on the other hand, means that the matter is made public, by communicating it to the public at large, or to so many persons that the matter must be regarded as substantially certain to become one of public knowledge.

However, in a world where there’s the potential for even a seemingly innocuous photo to go viral, these distinctions make for some very difficult line-drawing, for example:

If a celebrity’s friend tweets a photo of that celebrity smoking pot in his own house, is that information protected because it’s newsworthy?
If I’m an individual who simply wants to keep to myself — no Facebook, no Twitter, not even an email address — is writing about me on a personal blog or Facebook page, or uploading (and/or tagging) photos of me, “highly offensive to a reasonable person?”
Even if a disclosure is highly offensive, does publication via social media constitute publicity? What if the publisher only has 3 friends? Or 100? Or 2,000?
Does something going viral change a publication among friends into publicity?
What if a Flickr photo from an intimate dinner with friends, not highly offensive, but potentially embarrassing just because someone is ugly, goes viral and the subject becomes a laughing-stock? What’s the recourse?

But it doesn’t stop there. As I discuss in more detail in my GigaOM Pro piece, the confluence of facial-recognition technology, cloud computing and big-data processing could soon make it possible to determine a person’s name and any publicly accessible information about them via a mobile app. Nefarious types with some data-science skills could predict your Social Security number knowing just your name, age and hometown. And it all starts with a single photo on Facebook.

For someone who has intentionally kept a low profile online to avoid sharing personal information, the advent of such technologies completely undermines that personal decision. Far from being just a face in the crowd or a guy at the end of the bar, anyone with a mobile phone and $4.99 app could know more personal information than that person would ever share willingly. All because his friends are sharing the details of their own lives online.

I don’t know how exactly judges and legal scholars might create a new tort claim to balance individuals’ interests in privacy against other individuals’ freedom of speech and technological progression, but it seems like the time is right — more than 120 years after Warren & Brandeis — to rethink our right to be let alone. In an era of viral video and social graphs, information travels faster and further than ever before, making it more important than ever to determine whose right it is to tell their own story.

Feature image courtesy of Flickr user striatic.

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Integrating autistic people into the community

2011-09-18T14:08:55Z

On the cover of today's NYT, a 8,000+ word feature on Justin Canha, an autistic high school student who has been participating in an intensive program that aims to integrate people with autism (and not just the "high-functioning" kind) into the community. Justin is a talented artist, and is often sweet and charming, but he is also extremely confused by many everyday social interactions. His teacher, Kate Stanton-Paule, has been accompanying him through a multi-year program of daily community routines (shopping, working at part-time jobs), and Amy Harmon's long, well-written piece chronicles the triumphs and failures of the new approach that aims to replace segregation and institutionalization with integration and participation.

Some advocates of “neurodiversity” call this the next civil rights frontier: society, they say, stands to benefit from accepting people whose brains work differently. Opening the workplace to people with autism could harness their sometimes-unusual talents, advocates say, while decreasing costs to families and taxpayers for daytime aides and health care and housing subsidies, estimated at more than $1 million over an adult lifetime.
But such efforts carry their own costs. In this New York City suburb, the school district considered scrapping Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program almost as soon as it began, to save money on the extra teaching assistants who accompanied students to internships, the bank, the gym, the grocery store. Businesses weighed the risks of hiring autistic students who might not automatically grasp standard rules of workplace behavior.
Oblivious to such debates, many autistic high school students are facing the adult world with elevated expectations of their own. Justin, who relied on a one-on-one aide in school, had by age 17 declared his intention to be a “famous animator-illustrator.” He also dreamed of living in his own apartment, a goal he seemed especially devoted to when, say, his mother asked him to walk the dog.

Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World - NYTimes.com (Thanks, Scott!)

(Image: A job at a bakery, Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times, used with permission)

Stevie Wonder praises iOS for accessibility

2011-09-16T15:00:00Z

Last weekend, musician Stevie Wonder played a nightclub in Los Angeles. At one point during the set, the blind songsmith discussed the work he does with the United Nations, trying to make both the United States and other countries more accessible to persons with disabilities. While he said there was a lot of work left to do, he had nothing but praise for one company's accessibility efforts.

"I want you all to give a hand to someone that you know whose health is very bad at this time. But for someone who, and his company, took the challenge in making his technology accessible to everyone, in the spirit of carrying and moving the world forward: Steve Jobs. Because there's nothing on the iPhone or the iPad that you can do that I can't do. As a matter of fact, I can be talking to you, you can be looking at me, and I can be doing whatever I need to do, and you won't even know what I'm doing. Yeah!"

Apple has built an extensive suite of accessibility tools into its iOS devices to assist users with disabilities. A video of Wonder's speech is embedded below, and his remarks about Apple start at about 4:38.

[via The Next Web]

Stevie Wonder praises iOS for accessibility originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Buys Motorola Mobility For $12.5B, Says “Android Will Stay Open”

2011-08-15T11:35:51Z

Google just announced that it is acquiring Motorola Mobility. The search and online advertising company is buying the company for approximately $12.5 billion (or $40 per share), in cash. The price represents a premium of 63 percent to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares last Friday. Google had about $39 billion in cash at last count.

Here’s the other important part of the PR (the why, and what happens to Android now):

The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.

In a blog post, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page writes that Google has acquired Motorola not only because of its strength in Android smartphones and devices, but also for being a “market leader in the home devices and video solutions business.”

It’s also a move to build up the company’s patent portfolio, he adds, as it will “enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies”.

According to Motorola Mobility’s website, the company holds approximately 14,600 granted patents and 6,700 pending patent applications, worldwide, as of January 2011. Update: You can find updated numbers on this – based on the conference call – in our follow-up post.

Motorola Mobility is what used to be the Mobile Devices division of Motorola until January 2011.

A few years ago, Motorola bet its future in the mobile devices market by going full Android, launching the “Droid” – initially on the Verizon network – on November 6, 2009. The “Droid X” and “Droid 2″ followed in 2010.

Big question now is: how will HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Acer, Lenovo and other Android device makers respond to this news? Update: Google points out some of them already have.

We’re jumping on the conference call soon, and doing thorough analysis later. For now, whoa.

Full press release:

Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility

Combination will Supercharge Android, Enhance Competition, and Offer Wonderful User Experiences

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. & LIBERTYVILLE, Ill.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said, “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said, “This transaction offers significant value for Motorola Mobility’s stockholders and provides compelling new opportunities for our employees, customers, and partners around the world. We have shared a productive partnership with Google to advance the Android platform, and now through this combination we will be able to do even more to innovate and deliver outstanding mobility solutions across our mobile devices and home businesses.”

Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, said, “We expect that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android ecosystem. However, our vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community. We will continue to work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute innovative Android-powered devices.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals in the US, the European Union and other jurisdictions, and the approval of Motorola Mobility’s stockholders. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2011 or early 2012.

Crunchbase

GOOGLE

Company:
GOOGLE

Website:
http://google.com

Launch Date:
7/9/1998

IPO:
25/8/2004, NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of...

Learn more

Crunchbase

MOTOROLA

Company:
MOTOROLA

Website:
http://www.motorola.com

Launch Date:
1928

Motorola is a telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It is a manufacturer of wireless telephone handsets, also designing and selling wireless network infrastructure equipment such as cellular transmission...

Learn more

Lost Programming Skills

2011-08-06T13:00:00Z

Today's coders may know how to whip up a PHP script or a Drupal extension, create a mobile app for both the iPhone and Android, and run DOOM on their car's GPS (which has been done, it turns out). But there's a lot that their predecessors knew that today's programmers don't.

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2011-08-06T13:32:00Z

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Are Smartphones Taking Over Our Lives? [STUDY]

2011-08-04T11:41:18Z

New research portrays the UK as a smartphone-addicted country. Mobile data services have increased 40-fold in a three-year period in the country, and more than a quarter of adults and nearly half of teenagers own a smartphone.

The 341-page report, released by UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom, is sprinkled with nuggets of information about mobile data consumption among smartphone users, as well as larger telecommunications trends in Internet, radio and TV usage.

Here are some of the takeaways regarding smartphone usage:

37% of adults and 60% of teens admit they are highly addicted to their smartphones.
81% of smartphone users make calls every day compared with 53% of regular users.
23% of teenagers claim to watch less TV and 15% admit they read fewer books as a result of their smartphone use.
51% of adults and 65% of teens say they have used their smartphone while socializing with others.
23% of adults and 34% of teens have used their smartphones during mealtimes.
22% of adult and 47% of teens admitted using or answering their smartphone while in the bathroom.
58% of adult males owned a smartphone compared with 42% of females.
Among teenagers, 52% of females use smartphones compared with 48% of males.
The majority of adults (32%) identified Apple’s iPhone as their favorite device, while the majority of teens (37%) prefer the BlackBerry.

SEE ALSO: Survey: Cellphones vs. Sex – Which Wins? [INFOGRAPHIC]

With increasing telecommunications options in an ever-connected world, addiction to mobile and Internet use is not uncommon. In South Korea, there are even clinics for treating Internet addicts.

How would you define smartphone addiction? Does taking a few calls from the toilet and texting during dinner make you an addict? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

More About: Mobile 2.0, smartphones, uk

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Google-Backed Pixazza Launches "Image Apps," Rebrands As Luminate

2011-07-27T14:56:21Z

Pixazza, a startup backed by Google Ventures, is known for "in-image advertising," a method of overlaying photographs with relevant ads--when a user mouses over a picture of, say, a bicycle, for example, he or she might see an offer to purchase a bike from an onlne retailer such as Amazon or Sears; if a purchase is made, Pixazza takes a cut of the sale. Today, the company, which also announced that it's rebranding its name as Luminate, is ramping up its in-image advertising efforts by introducing "image apps," a platform that turns static images into dynamic and interactive applications.

Now, when a user mouses over a Luminate-enhanced image, an app icon will appear in the lower corner of the image, similar to the taskbar or docking bay on Windows and Mac OS. The apps are simple yet convenient, designed to bring more use to an image: a shopping app to find products featured in the image; social apps to share the photograph via Facebook or Twitter; and information apps that provide more context around an image, such as its geotagged location or a Wikipedia entry.

There are more than 3 trillion images on the web, but "the issue is that they're all static--they're flat, rectangular boxes of pixels," says Luminate CEO Bob Lisbonne. "They're the center of attention all the time, and it's a shame that not much has changed about images since the 1990s--we want to change that, and enable all 3 trillion images to be interactive rich experiences."

Lisbonne sees myriad applications for the platform, and he takes me through roughly a half-dozen of them. Mouse over a picture of, say, Derek Jeter, and you might have a sports app that provides real-time stats above the image, similar to the backside of a baseball card. Perhaps an image of Yankee Stadium might feature an app for Wikipedia (for a brief in-image history of the ballpark), for Bing Maps (to find where the stadium is located), or an option to purchase tickets via StubHub.

The social sharing tools are especially interesting: Luminate gives users the option not simply to share an image, but to share a particular part of an image. Using the Twitter app, for example, users can select a section of the image, write a comment, and that text will appear as a superimposed annotation on top of the image, ready to be shared via tweet.

The point is to take advantage of an image's context and give the user more relevant information. But not all applications are commercial. Lisbonne imagines the eye-catching pictures we so often see of tragedies, say from the earthquakes in Japan or tornadoes in the South, could give way to apps from the Red Cross to raise donations.

Luminate uses an image recognition system that combs through metadata and human crowdsourcing to tag photographs with relevant apps and information. It's already one of the largest advertising networks in the U.S., with a reach of more than 150 million unique monthly users and more than 4,000 publisher partners.

"In the same way that there's an app store for Apple's iOS and a marketplace for Android, we will make available an image app store so that publishers can take advantage of not just Luminate's apps but a great many third-party apps as well," Lisbonne says. "Our goal is to add a wide range of compelling of features for consumers, and turbocharge our growth."

Wolfram Research lance un format interactif pour données numériques

2011-07-25T08:59:55Z

Le format de fichier CDF peut afficher des informations numériques sous une forme interactive. Une solution intéressante et multiplateforme, mais pas totalement ouverte.

Samsung is overtaking Apple in smartphone sales

2011-07-25T10:15:00Z

Might be the market leader

The internet is killing the high street - and why I think it's a good thing

2011-07-19T11:32:02Z

Steve Ranger's Notebook: Retailers need to relearn the art of shopping - and so do we...

(silicon.com - Sales & Marketing)

Les données pour comprendre le monde

2011-07-19T11:30:31Z

L’année dernière, l’un des ateliers de Lift France était consacré au journalisme de données. A l’occasion d’une masterclass consacrée au sujet, Nicolas Kayser-Bril, datajournalise – c’est-à-dire à la fois journaliste, statisticien, programmeur et chef de projet -, est venu faire le point sur ce qu’il s’est passé en un an.

Image : NKB sur la scène de Lift, photographié par Swannyyy.

“On était radicaux l’année dernière, on avait des espoirs. On l’est peut-être moins un an après”, reconnait Nicolas Kayser-Bril en attaquant sa présentation.

Le journalisme de données est né en 2005, quand Adrian Holovaty a lancé sa carte du crime de Chicago puis a signé en 2006 un important manifeste du data journalisme. En 2009, le Guardian a lancé son datablog, montrant l’importance que le sujet avait pris pour la presse innovante. Le journalisme de données a explosé l’année dernière, le 27 juillet 2010, quand Wikileaks a sorti ses documents sur l’Afghanistan : une base de données était devenue le matériel principal pour créer des articles. Des développeurs ont travaillé avec des journalistes pour créer des choses nouvelles en jouant du matériel source et de la manière d’en présenter les résultats. Les articles et cartographies du Guardian sur la localisation des attaques ont bien montré que c’était là la révélation principale de ces données. Fin 2010, sur les documents clefs irakiens libérés à nouveau par Wikileaks, l’information clef reposait là encore sur les morts et leur cartographie. La diffusion des télégrammes de la diplomatie américaine dès fin 2010, même s’ils étaient essentiellement composés de textes qu’il fallait décrypter, a tout de même permis de créer des visualisations sur leurs répartitions. Désormais, à chaque évènement majeur (Fukushima, Lybie…), les rédactions jouent avec des outils ouverts pour créer des visualisations et sortir du cadre traditionnel de l’article. “Le datajournalisme est devenu un champ à part entière du journalisme”, estime Nicolas Kayser-Bril. Les rédactions se sont organisées. En 2009, quand le Guardian était isolé quand il a fait appel aux internautes pour analyser les notes de frais des représentants britanniques. En 2011, dans le cas de l’affaire des e-mails de Sarah Palin (l’Etat de l’Alaska ayant rendu public sous forme papier les e-mails officiels de son ancienne gouverneur), plusieurs rédactions se sont rapidement organisées pour scanner, traiter et faire analyser avec la complicité des internautes, les 24 000 documents libérés.

Datajournalism, one year on. on Prezi

“La question qu’il faut se poser, un an plus tard est “est-ce que ça marche ?” et “qu’est-ce que ça a changé ?”. Pour les journalistes, pour les utilisateurs, mais aussi pour les actionnaires des groupes de presse”. Pour les journalistes : le datajournalisme a changé beaucoup de choses : il leur a appris à utiliser des bases de données, d’acquérir de nouvelles compétences, de nouveaux outils. Car sans ces nouveaux outils nombre de ces histoires n’auraient pu voir le jour, rappelle le datajournaliste. Cela a donné naissance à de nouvelles communautés, comme ScraperWiki, une plateforme pour mettre en relation journalistes et développeurs. Cela a donné naissance à de nouveaux process permettant d’intégrer les utilisateurs dans le processus comme l’ont montré Prixdeleau.fr (une cartographie collaborative pour connaitre le prix de l’eau dans chaque ville de France) ou les Warlogs (une interface de visualisation pour analyser de manière collaborative les documents libérés par Wikileaks) ou encore InfluenceNetworks (une interface collaborative pour visualiser les conflits d’intérêts entre personnes publiques) ou bien sûr l’analyse des notes de frais des députés britanniques.

“Tous n’ont pas marché”, reconnaît le journaliste. Force est de reconnaitre que les Warlogs, les systèmes d’analyse des e-mails de Sarah Palin ou l’analyse des notes de frais des députés britanniques n’ont pas fourni des résultats intéressants. Cela s’explique en partie parce qu’il faut connaître le contexte pour comprendre quels documents sont intéressants.

Pour les utilisateurs, ce qui a le plus changé c’est l’accès massif aux bases de données, comme celles libérées et analysées par le journal texan en ligne Texas Tribune. Il y a une demande pour ce type d’information, même si elle est limitée. La plus grande partie des utilisateurs de NosDeputes.fr est composée d’assistants-parlementaires qui utilisent le site parce qu’il est plus accessible que celui de l’Assemblée nationale. Mais ce n’est pas une demande de l’utilisateur lambda : “l’accès aux bases de données ne va pas créer des pages vues et sauver les journaux”, ironise NKB.

En fait, pour les utilisateurs, les données permettent d’imaginer de nouveaux types de récits, interactifs, comme le jeu Primaires à gauche, lancé par LeMonde.fr ou des webdocumentaires qui délinéarisent le récit pour que l’utilisateur puisse naviguer dans le contenu. Reste que les rédactions ne sont pas des professionnels des interactions ou des jeux vidéos. L’audience du web documentaire est souvent faible. On demande aux gens de consulter des sujets par eux-mêmes (puisqu’ils doivent naviguer dedans) alors que les sujets ne les passionnent pas nécessairement. Les webdocumentaires sont souvent des échecs en terme d’audience, ce qui montre qu’il faut certainement encore un peu plus les professionnaliser et surtout mettre en valeur les moyens d’amener le public jusqu’à eux.

La dernière nouveauté pour les utilisateurs, c’est le risque du contre-sens. Tout le monde veut faire du datajournalisme, mais les chiffres ne se travaillent pas comme les textes. Les erreurs sont légions et tout le monde ne maîtrise pas les calculs de probabilité ou les statistiques.
Pour les actionnaires par contre, les avantages du datajournalisme sont loin d’être avérés ! Alors qu’un article papier demande 5 heures de travail d’un journaliste pour faire 5000 impressions, le datajournalisme nécessite le travail de toute une équipe (journaliste, développeur, designer, cher de projet). Il coûte trois fois plus cher, prend 3 fois plus de temps à développer, alors qu’il ne rapporte pas 3 fois plus d’argent, ni 3 fois plus d’impressions. “Si le datajournalisme ne rentre pas dans les business models des journaux ont aura un problème”.

Le datajournalisme est un processus comme le disait Paul Bradshaw, et le principal problème réside souvent dans la dernière étape : la communication. Toutes les données ne valent pas le coût de la visualisation : beaucoup demeurent peu intéressantes. Enfin, il faut arriver à les communiquer pas simplement en pointant vers une belle animation.

Pour Nicolas Kayser-Bril, il y a encore des choses à faire. Les actionnaires doivent investir dans la confiance entre les médias et les utilisateurs. Le modèle publicitaire est cassé et ne va pas se réparer tout seul. Un article qui fait 1000 pages vues rapporte entre 2 et 10 euros. Mais si vous faites un article qui permet à des gens d’économiser quelque chose, peut-être qu’on peut trouver le moyen d’y gagner et de rétablir des relations de confiances basées sur la rentabilité de tous.

Les écoles de journalisme doivent changer leurs cursus : elles doivent aller chercher des mathématiciens, des statisticiens, des geeks. 87 % des étudiants en école de commerce utilisent Excel contre seulement 5 % des étudiants en école de journalisme. Les rédactions doivent fonctionner en mode projet plutôt qu’en mode article. Elles ont besoin de journalistes-chefs de projets, capables de travailler en équipes pour avoir des projets cohérents…

“On a besoin d’analyses pertinentes sur les données qu’on collecte pour en raconter les histoires…” conclut Nicolas Kayser-Bril.

Le datajournalisme n’est-il pas confronté au risque de trop de transparence, questionne Laurent Haugg. En Suède, les e-mails officiels des élus sont publics, tant et si bien qu’ils n’y disent plus rien. “C’est une question d’équilibre”, reconnaît NKB. “Les députés en France peuvent faire des notes de frais sans justificatif… Là-bas le curseur est trop fort, ici le curseur n’est pas bon.”

En février, Hasan Elahi, expliquait qu’il avait regagné sa vie privée en publiant tout de lui. “Le risque du datajournalisme n’est-il pas d’être noyé sous l’information ?”, interroge encore Laurent Haug. “Oui, c’est ce que font les gouvernements actuels, en reprenant la main sur l’Open Data”, souligne NKB. “On nous fournit des données non stratégiques, des ensembles peu intéressants. Les budgets sont peu présents, ou sans détails. Effectivement, on a un problème si on laisse les administrations et les gouvernements noyer le poisson des données.”

C’est ce que montrait récemment l’association rennaise Bug qui s’intéressait aux données financières libérées par la ville de Rennes, montrant que leur usage n’est pas si évident parce qu’il est difficile de les comparer à d’autres jeux de données (qui ne prennent pas en compte les mêmes ensembles de données) et parce que les jeux de données libérés sont largement incomplets pour créer des statistiques intéressantes.

L’Open Data montre surtout combien l’acteur public manque d’outils pour prendre des décisions éclairées. Il n’est certainement pas le seul… L’open data a certainement besoin de bonnes pratiques, d’ambitions comme l’exprimait un récent rapport, mais il a aussi besoin de s’affirmer pour ne pas rester un outil de communication politique dans lequel beaucoup sont tentés de l’enfermer. Et c’est bien tout l’enjeu du datajournalisme de montrer que d’autres outils sont possibles pour comprendre le monde.

datajournalisme, données publiques, lift, lift11, liftfrance, opendata, visualisation

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