I have been an avid reader of FlowingData ever since I stumbled across it.  Every day, Nathan posts about some new visualization or data set that we should look at.  Today, Nathan launched your.flowingdata.com and I am really impressed with the amount of work he put into it.  The idea behind your.flowingdata is that you can track, trend and visualize your own habits.  The one catch is that you need to direct message these actions to @yfd.  

For all those out there that are interested in data visualizations, FlowingData is a great place to start.  If you have a twitter account and are trying to track how much you eat, when you sleep or whatever else you want to track give your.flowingdata a try.  

I’ll be honest, I am horrible at logging the minute details of my life, but I am debating doing it now!

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In 2006, I started my master’s thesis under the advisory of Elizabeth Sklar, PhD. At the time I was very excited about new web technologies and everyone’s use of web services. I had the idea of creating a simulation visualization platform using web services.  In multi-agent research, a subset of artificial intelligence, you create simulations to understand how each AI agent, or program, would react in a certain situation.  Very often those simulations are not monitored in real-time, instead they are reported on afterwards.  My idea was  to create a real-time view into those simulations.  Fortunately, I took a job in corporate america.  Unfortunately, I didn’t finish.  

In the last 3 years technology and my interests have changed.  Web services is still as popular as it was, but it isn’t new anymore.  The visualization problem is still an issue, so I have changed focus.  Since a lot of my interests now lie in social media, and there is constantly new data out there to process, I have decided to start researching twitter visualizations.  Thanks to a few twitter followers, I found a handful of great resources and have already started compiling a list.

My goal is to take the list of what is out there and figure out how to bring them all together using artificial intelligence.  Some of the visualizations are word based, like twitscoop.com, some are time based like TwitterStreamGraphs and some are geo based, like TwitterVision.  They all have great uses, but are very different and are used very differently.  Now imagine a tool that learns what you are looking for and presents the best visualization to help you find what you need.  That might be a hybrid of a couple different views, but the AI agents would figure it out.  

As I continue to research and find out new things, I will post more.  As always, if you have any ideas that you think are helpful, I am all ears!

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On Friday, I sat down with someone I work with who made a prediction that someday soon there will be a backlash from all the time spent using twitter.  His argument was that he doesn’t see the value of these interactions during office hours and that it seems like a distraction from the work at hand.  During our conversation I defended social media, especially twitter, but I have been thinking about it ever since.

I believe that interacting with people in your field is very helpful to accomplish daily goals related to work.  I also believe that interacting with people outside of your field can help give perspective to the same goals.  Here is where I am having trouble: is a constant stream of interactions from both groups at the same time helpful?  Especially when they are trying to feed you new articles and videos and enticing things to view.  Personally, I follow all the “cool” tweeple like @MackCollier and @guykawasaki, but I am not in PR and am not a full time entrepreneur.  I follow tech superstars too, but is my colleague right? Is all of this just a distraction from my day job?

With my MBTI training and my post on extroverts vs. introverts still fresh in mind, today I will defend social media as an outlet an extrovert needs to be successful at all times.  I am an extrovert and sitting in an office by myself or working at home can seem draining.  I need to know there are people out there talking.  I may tune them out. I may listen in here or there, but that chatter keeps my mind revved.  The little tweet notifications from TweetDeck don’t always drive me to see what’s going on, but it reminds me that I am not the only one connected.  I feed off of the 140 character bites that my friends give me and use that energy to deliver good work.  

Of course there are situations where I already have a lot of going on around me and my focus is being tested.  In those cases, I turn off TweetDeck and disconnect from the social media world, but I have a feeling I am not the only one to do this.  

So, is social media a distraction?  You tell me.  Do you find social media takes away your focus from work or do you feed off the buzz like I do?  Is your MBTI type preference for introversion or extroversion?  Do you think it makes a difference?

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