My new Pinterest #Bigdata board

Hey. I just updated my Pinterest "bigdata" board. Lots of good stuff in a single location. Thought you might be interested.

I'll be updating this board with new content weekly, which is more than I can say for this blog at the moment. Working on that as well.

So here's the Pinterest board. Feel free to comment or "follow."


Follow Charlie's board Big Data on Pinterest.


While I was at it... I've been collecting informative videos on the subject. I've got a bunch from a number of conferences, featuring interviews with key data scientists and visionaries. There's some really good content here.

AfroPop is Awesome

I'm going to plug my personal YouTube Channel, also called Pop Impulse, with this AfroPop Playlist. It's one of my biggest, and I'm proud of the variety I've been able to uncover and collect. This is why I love YouTube. The Pop Impulse channel has 16 playlists, and about 450 videos. That number changes as I remove vids that are taken down by DMCA notices and add new favorites. I try to change the "featured" video that graces the channel homepage a couple of times a week, so there's always some variety for users. If you head on by and like what you see & hear, please subscribe and leave me a comment.  A couple of years ago, I wrote an extensive post on African music, tracing the origins of my interest. It's here.

Royalty in the YouTube Era

In a cyberspace FIRST, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, England's longest living monarch at 81, today launched a Royal Channel on YouTube. That's right, HRH is now appearing in a variety of videos on the newly configured channel announced today. Readers might also be interested to note that her annual holiday address to the nation is also available as a podcast via the royal web site. Okay, I'm impressed. Her highness seems to get it, and she's obviously got some tuned-in advisors. Here is the Times of London announcement article, and here is the Wikipedia entry on Elizabeth II with everything you ever wanted to know about the old girl and then some.

This does represent something of a validation and coming-of-age for the Internet. YouTube is already playing an important role in US elections, in citizen journalism and user-produced entertainment. Google's YouTube site may turn out to supplant network television in the same manner that Craig's List has undermined local newspapers.

Delirium on YouTube Trumps La Scala

I posted some time ago about a stunning new operatic tenor who brought down the house at La Scala. Delirium, the critics said of the crowd response to Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez. Read about it here.

I recently came across the now legendary YouTube video of Welsh mobile phone salesman Paul Potts' performance on the BBC's Britain's Got Talent show, an American Idol predecessor. The crowd that night was delirius as well. But more importantly, the net became crazed as the video of Potts' performance went totally viral. Now, almost 17 million views of the original video have been recorded. Potts, produced by Simon Cowell, has gone on to perform in New York and to release two CDs. So I'm going to argue that, thanks to the net, the most celebrated new tenor since the late Pavarotti is Paul Potts.

YouTube Debate - An Unqualified Success

As a Summer intern blogging for CBS put it: I am, like, so not bored watching this. And that's the point, right? New media speaking to a new audience, bringing them into the process.

I do a lot of political organizing in southern Oregon. These days, all of our work is data-driven. There is one precinct in our region that has consistently undervoted for decades, reflected in election-cycle record keeping. That would be the precinct that encompasses Southern Oregon University. Local candidates generally don't even bother to work this neighborhood. Why would they? That's why the YouTube debate was historic. It spoke to Gen X and Gen Y in a way that no other media could. Pundits who have cast the event as a gimmick are wrong in that regard. No, this was a milestone in participatory democracy.