Hello Friends, My name is Chris, and I am a member of Occupy D.C. I am reaching out to this list at the suggestion of @LiberationTech with a few questions relating to mapping the Occupy movement. An Occupy-affiliated group, We All Occupy ( website<https://sites.google.com/site/wealloccupy/home>), has been painstakingly gathering data/links/advice/ and other resources on their site. I was able to geocode a listing of over 1300 Occupy locations globally, including their website URL, Facebook URL, and Twitter URL. Admittedly, the database still has many errors and is far from completion. I was then able to take this data and map each location with the appropriate URLs in a tooltip window using TileMill from MapBox: ( Global Occupy Map<http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/upload.1sn5izz5.html#2.00/41.2/-13.3>) as well as a map with Socrata: ( OpenData Map <https://opendata.socrata.com/dataset/pointmap/bfrg-v5m8> ). I have three mapping-related inquiries: *1. Do you know of anyone/any organization who might be interested in hosting the open-source MapBox<http://developmentseed.org/about/open-source/> software on their servers for the Global Occupy Map? * Development Seed (MapBox/TileMill) has been generous in offering to host the map for one month. I imagine there to be many other liberating uses for this type of mapping technology, and I hope the Occupy map will inspire others to consider visualization as an advocacy tool. *2. How should I approach real-time data? * MapBox and Socrata are not, to my knowledge, very good at handling dynamic data, which is what the majority of what I imagine Occupy Data to be. (See Occupy Research here <http://occupyresearch.wikispaces.com/> for examples of previous visualizations, and I put together this stack of other Occupy maps for comparison: ( http://delicious.com/stacks/view/HruuI0 ). What I notice from the other maps is that the Ushahidi/CrowdMap maps are good for real-time but don't seem able to handle existing large datasets, and the tooltips/pop-up windows give limited information. The map itself is not very impressive. Data Visualization/maps should be beautiful, fun, perhaps even inspiring. I see some potential in using the Google Visualization API to generate dynamic maps, especially since data would be hosted in Google Docs already. However, I only recently (i.e., 2 months ago) started to script/develop. *3. Does anyone have experience in creating Google GeoMap Visualizations with a Google Docs spreadsheet as the source? * I apologize for the length of this email. I like to think it is because of all the links I included. Information is power! Sincerely, Chris _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE