Monday, April 30, 2012

Visualizing Data: The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook

"The Data Journalism Handbook is a free, open-source reference for anyone interested in the field of data journalism. It features contributions from over 70 of the leading global voices of authority and has now been released, remarkably only 6 months after its conception. It is a joint initiative between the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation and is published by O’Reilly Media."

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Everything You Never Knew About CSS Floats

What do floats really do anyway? How do they affect the box model of the elements involved? How do floated elements differ from inline elements? What are the specific rules governing the position of floated elements? How does the clear property work and what is it for?

Find out in this article from Design Shack.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Internet security: Keys to the Cloud Castle

Dropbox's service is more than adequate for most purposes, but it is not an appropriate place for CIT students to store RSA keys.

Read why in this May 2011 post on a blog at The Economist.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Survey of Software Developers, re: Tools

InfoGraphic: A survey of former Berkeley students now in the software industry concerning programming languages, etc.

Note that the leading development platform is cloud computing.

How is Publishing Changing in the Digital Age?

Interview w/ Clay Shirky, Professor of Interactive Telecommunications, NYU.

Excerpt:
"Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done."

"In ye olden times of 1997, it was difficult and expensive to make things public, and it was easy and cheap to keep things private. Privacy was the default setting. We had a class of people called publishers because it took special professional skill to make words and images visible to the public. Now it doesn’t take professional skills. It doesn’t take any skills. It takes a Wordpress install."
Do you agree with this definition of publishing? Which professional skills do you think are "no longer required"?

H.L. Mencken said “freedom of the press is limited to those who own one”. How would you update this?