| Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 |
"I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum." Bishop Desmond Tutu
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- Wiki analytics: using the new Google Analytics tools to measure and improve a civic wikiNovember 19
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This is part of the Wiki Wednesday and coincidentally also part of the Web Analytics Wednesday series.
Google Analytics has ... new features. Mediawiki ... Arborwiki .. tracking user behavior to improve. Here's some applications.
1. Segmentation by geography.
Arborwiki covers information about Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and the surrounding Washtenaw County area. One reasonable segmentation of the readership and contributor base is ...
...
(graph)
We'll break down usage for specific pages and see how they differ. First, look at traffic coming from Wikipedia - how does it compare to everything else?
(graph)
Next, look at the most popular page, the "birthday deals" page, who is seeing that?
(graph)
A further refinement will look at how much birthday deal traffic is coming from surrounding suburbs, e.g. Oakland County.
2. Conversion tracking: who edits a page.
... page edit as a success criterion
... Two end states: a page is edited that didn't exist before, or a person edits a page (because they linked to something that wasn't there) and it was abandoned. That's a failure condition and a sign that the wiki is incomplete in that specific area ...
(graph)
(report)
3. ...
...
(quote from Avinash)
(quote from ...)...
You can overthink a civic wiki; until there's a critical mass of content, ... So don't stare at your metrics until you have
- How to run Django on Google App Engine - results of the Ann Arbor Google App Engine hackathonNovember 17
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I'm at the Google App Engine hackathon in Ann Arbor. My goal for the day is to get a Django instance running on top of appengine as much as possible, using as much of the existing code base that's out there that I can. (This instead of say, hacking a wiki, which is what their sample app is - been there done that.)
Here's some background reading:
Using Django with Appengine - Shabda Raaj. "Welcome to Django tutorial for integrating with Appengine. This is a port of the Django tutorial to use appengine instead of Pure Django. Like in the Django tutorial, we build a poll engine, where you can create polls and others can vote for them. Instead of the four part Django tutorial, we use only one tutorial. Also, as many parts of Django, most prominently its super Admin interface do not work, we will work around them. I will assume that you know python well. However I do not assume that you have previous experience with Django. Django concepts are explained."
With app-engine-patch a major part of Django works on App Engine without any modifications. The most important change is that you have to use Google's Model class because the development model is too different from Django.
We also integrate a package called ragendja which provides functions that simplify Django and App Engine development.
to be continued....
Here's Guido van Rossum's keynote in September 2008 about Google App Engine and Django.
- 2008 Election Maps: Wayne Baker on metaphors of color in Mark Newman's cartogramsNovember 15
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We've seen lots of electoral maps, with the US colored various shades of red, blue, or purple. The simplest ones just colorize the map; the most complex distort the map and refine the color space to show various aspects of the population, its voting patterns and changes over time.
Jason Kottke has a good collection of 2008 election maps from all over the world, showing mostly the state of real time map software by newspapers, web sites, and television updated during the vote count.
Wayne Baker asks on his Our Values blog:
Take a moment, perhaps as you're watching election returns, to tell me what you think of our country right now. Think about this question: What color is America today?
Mark Newman has a collection of 2008 election cartograms that selectively distort the map to show how the electoral college and county by county variety in political preferences paint a distinctive landscape:
http://www-pers
- Sayre Fire, Los AngelesNovember 15
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Hot on the heels of the Tea Fire comes word of another big fire in Los Angeles, the Sayre Fire.
Here's the news sources I was able to round up quickly; no doubt this will be changing fast.
- Los Angeles Fire Department: Fire update 6am Sat PST; Fire evacuation map;
- Los Angeles DWP: Major power lines taken out of service
- Blog: LAist - power shut off by DWP; freeway closure map;
- Newspaper: LA Times - overview with map and videos
- Television: KABC 7 live video
I'm particularly looking for news about Reseda (family in the area).
- santa-barbara-fire [Flickr]November 14
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Edward Vielmetti posted a photo:
Jason Fox, Seattle WA, sent me this photo:
My brother is a musician and lives less than 2 miles south of the fire , he has lost power here is a picture he just took beforehand , feel free to post it on your blog, or to fwd it to news agencies , his name is Justin Fox, of the band Tripdavon.
www.tripdavon.com/
Much more about the fire here
vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2008/11/santa-barbara-and-mo...
with photos, maps, news links, radio, television, newspaper, and blog coverage