Month: October 2012

Quick walkthrough of my first piece of data journalism

Yesterday I published my first piece of data journalism for our online group blog Independent Everything. Our blog looks at independent small businesses in North London and I wanted to analyse what Thursday’s GDP statistics meant for them.

The data was published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The first dataset was how the output for the UK and its service sector changed from quarted to quarter. It was available to download as a spreadsheet. I imported the spreadsheet from Excel to a Google Spreadsheet and created a chart. Continue reading “Quick walkthrough of my first piece of data journalism” →

Google and newspapers share the same bad mobile connection

Newspapers: trying to stay afloat with online advertising
Copyright Kevin Lim, reproduced under Creative Commons

It was an awful week for Google. On Tuesday it took some stinging criticism from European data protection commissioners who accused Google of providing “insufficient information to its users on its personal data processing operations”. Then, on Thursday its third quarter results were accidentally released a few hours early without a reassuring explanation from the chief executive officer, Larry Page. Shareholders bolted to the tune of $45m per second before Google managed to suspend trading. Continue reading “Google and newspapers share the same bad mobile connection” →

Jimmy Savile: why it’s taken so long

Copyright Flickr user James Cridland, reproduced under Creative Commons

One question keeps coming up as the allegations against Sir Jimmy Savile pour in: why has it taken until now for these allegations to come out? The Metropolitan Police say they stretch back over 50 years to 1959. Derek Chinnery, the controller of Radio 1 between 1978 and 1985 claims he confronted Savile about them twenty years ago. The People report today that an interviewer questioned Savile on the matter in 2001. Continue reading “Jimmy Savile: why it’s taken so long” →

Collaborative Consumption – Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Share Our Stuff

credit to Flickr user "Images_of_Money"
People are swapping their car keys for cash via sites like Getaround and Whipcar (Copyright Flickr user “Images_of_Money”, reproduced under Creative Commons”)

What would you do if you wanted to go to Liverpool next weekend and needed a place to stay? Or perhaps you’re in San Francisco and you want to drive around bohemian Haight-Ashbury, but you’re new in town and have no car?

The conventional answer would be to book a hotel or go to a car rental service, but these businesses have been challenged since around the beginning of the financial downturn by a new form of hiring and renting: collaborative consumption. Continue reading “Collaborative Consumption – Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Share Our Stuff” →