Visualizer of development data in ICT Description: Develop, from pieces of free software, a software that allows to gather and to represent manifold indicators of development of the information's society to be able to visualize it in the style of www.gapminder.org. From a study on the development of the ICT in the world (www.globaliswatch.org) in which the UPC and Pangea.org have participated, one would be to develop or rather to adapt, to integrate or to extend existing libraries or and to develop a free source software system that allow to build a Web site to show data in graphical form in a comprehensible way for a public constituted by scholars, adult citizens or researchers on indicators of development of the Information Society in the world.
Parts of the project: 1. To gather data (several possibilities): To obtain/consult the existing data from the Global Information Society Watch (principal provider), and maybe from other organizations whom or they have collected data and they can be consulted. These data would be static. To collect data thanks to the users around the world, who after being registered, can collaborate with concrete data on indicators, like a community Wikipedia but to collect development data. This it would be the case of more dynamic data, and it would be had to establish a control of quality of these data. (we need interface to register user, admin,… maybe Drupal can be use). To collect the data by means of governmental organisms that periodically could introduce new data. (difficult to collaborate) Completely external data: of NGO, associations or other institutions wanting to generate graphs and they could use the tool implemented in the second part, the graphical visualizer. Publish the graphs easily (difficult to do a generic application to generate graphs)
2. Graphical visualizer: It will be had to study… How we want to show the information? What we want to show? to make it the selection more or less flexible of the parts show… according to the users of this. I want to do a useful and attractive tool to visualize data graphically, trying to achieve graphs/maps like gapminder.
Links: Global Information Society Watch (GISW): http://www.globaliswatch.org/ Associació pel Progrés de les Comunicacions ( APC): http://www.apc.org/ ITem, Institut del Tercer Món (The Third World Institute): http://www.item.org.uy Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA): http://www.caida.org World visualizers: o Guía del Mundo: http://www.guiadelmundo.org.uy (ITem) o Gapminder: http://www.gapminder.org/ o Maplecroft: http://www.maplecroft.net/ o Global Education Project: http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/index.php Website to generate graphs from your sources: http://www.graphwise.com
Graphic tools: JpGraph: http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/ JpGraph is a Object-Oriented Graph creating library for PHP. Available for PHP 4 and 5. Features and types of graphs: http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/features.php PHP/SWF Charts: http://www.maani.us/charts/index.php Use PHP scripts to generate or gather the data from databases, and then pass it to this tool to generate Flash (swf) charts and graphs. Supports PHP 3, 4, and 5. Use in the Drupal Module: http://drupal.org/project/swfcharts XML/SWF Charts: http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/index.php The same tool as PHP/SWF Charts but for any scripting language (ASP, CFML, Perl…) using XML. Flash Charts Pro: http://www.web-site-scripts.com/flash-charts/chartgallery.html (Not Free) XML -> Flash
FusionCharts v3: http://www.fusioncharts.com/Gallery.asp?gMenuItemId=3 (Trial) XML -> Flash FusionCharts Free: http://www.fusioncharts.com/free/ XML -> Flash PlotKit: http://www.liquidx.net/plotkit/ PlotKit is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for JavaScript . It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support. PlotKit is what Google use themselves for their graphing needs. JFreeChart: http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/ A free Java chart library. Dojo: http://dojotoolkit.org/ Open Source DHTML toolkit written in JavaScript Example: http://www.ridgway.co.za/archive/2007/04/13/A-Simple-DojoCharting-Example.aspx Open Flash Chart: http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart/ PHP -> Flash TimePlot: http://simile.mit.edu/timeplot/
CMS: Drupal: http://drupal.org/ CiviCRM: http://civicrm.org/
Types of graphics I have found: 2 variables o Bars (GISW)
o Lines (GISW)
o Graph-Mapa Mundi (http://www.maplecroft.net)
o Graph-Mapa Mundi + historical temporal line (www.gapminder.org)
o Graph-Mapa Mundi (www.guiadelmundo.org.uy)
3 variables + historical temporal line (www.gapminder.org)