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Data Table: Top 300 Yellow Page Headings

admin — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:05:54 +0000

Top 300 YP Headers

I came across some interesting data the other day detailing the top 300 yellow page headers for 2006. This list shows you the most popular categories listed in the local phone book, based on the number of total references to a particular category listing.

As you can see, the top 3 categories are:

Restaurants (Fast Foods, Other & Non Specific)
Physician & Surgeons (Specialists & Non Specific)
Automobile Parts-New & Used

The data was stuck in a PDF document, so I grabbed it, parsed it and put it into a sortable data table to make it more functional. This data was compiled by the Yellow Pages Association.

Feel free to download the data table in CSV, JSON or XML format. Or download the PDF document if you want a hard copy.

Gmail Gadget: Monitor Twitter Feeds

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:38:51 +0000

I was reading over the Google Blog regarding a new feature that allows you to add any gadget by pasting in the URL of its XML spec file (e.g. http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml). I tested the feature and found that you can’t edit the Gadget settings within Gmail. So, I hacked a quick Gmail Gadget.

What I needed was a way to monitor several Twitter RSS feeds within Gmail, by using the new Gadget feature. Doing so allows me to monitor any conversation topic that I’m interested in right from Gmail.

I decided to use xFruits.com and added several Twitter query feeds for the words “addster”, “tweeple” and “twitter friends”. By using xFruits, I can add or remove keywords to the feed without recompiling the Gadget.

I added the Gadget to Gmail (from the settings tab) and to iGoogle and now I have a quick way to listen in on any Tweets.

If you want to hack your own, here’s the XML link that you can download and change the feed URL:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/115774797726329815586/addster-keyword-monitor.xml

After you make the changes, upload your XML file to Google. The quickest way is to use the Google Gadget Editor. Save the file in the editor. It will automatically generate a hosted XML link. Copy and paste into Gmail or iGoogle. Done.

And, here’s the webpage Gadget:

Graph Visualization: Graph Gear

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:25:01 +0000

Graph Gear is an open platform for graph visualization (the mathematical kind, not the bar chart kind). It allows you to create an interactive graph with force directed layout that has a good interactive user experience.

Graph Gear allows you to quickly render a customizable interaction graph that is described by a graph xml file. All you need to do is embed it in your page and pass the xml over javascript. It provides nice interactive capabilities and a force directed layout. The code is editable and compilable with MTASC, and it also features a javascript api to control graph interactions.

Since it’s based on XML, you can extend this to include triples N3 or RDF graph visualization.

Source: http://www.creativesynthesis.net/blog/?page_id=60