Joomla! site syndication http://jdlh.com 2010-03-10T15:30:48+01:00 http://jdlh.com http://jdlh.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png text/html 2009-10-26T12:49:25+01:00 http://jdlh.com http://jdlh.com/en/doc/2009/canada-stimulus.html ... a data analysis by two non-partisan software engineers from Vancouver. by Jim DeLaHunt <http://jdlh.com (/)>, info@jdlh.com (mailto:info@jdlh.com), @jdlh (http://twitter.com/jdlh); and Kaitlin Duck Sherwood <http://maps.webfoot.com (http://maps.webfoot.com/)>, ducky@webfoot.com (mailto:ducky@webfoot.com). The media are, as of October 2009, running stories like, “Stimulus program favours Tory ridings (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/stimulus-program-favours-tory-ridings/article1333239/)” (Globe Mail), “Liberal, NDP ridings getting more than fair share…: analysis (http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2143818)” (National Post). We’re engineers; we’re non-partisan; we wanted to see the data. The Government of Canada has a stimulus program website (http://actionplan.gc.ca/) with some reports (http://actionplan.gc.ca/eng/feature.asp?pageId=143) and an API (http://actionplan.gc.ca/eng/feature.asp?pageId=134). We wrote come code, called the API, captured the data including latigude and longitude for each of 6,424 projects. We used Ducky’s maps.webfoot.com (http://maps.webfoot.com/)’s geoinformatics tools to identify which riding contained the lat/long for each project. We made a big spreadsheet, and cross-tabluated by MP’s party and by province. There are two chapters to this tale. First, we think the news reports are missing the real disproportionality story in Canada’s stimulus money allocations, at least as revealed in this data. Second, this is a wonderful example of how open government data can empower citizens. More on both below. text/html 2009-10-16T13:40:00+01:00 http://jdlh.com http://jdlh.com/en/doc/2009/twanguages_iuc33.html I presented a paper, Twanguages: a language census of Twitter , to the 33rd Internationalization and Unicode Conference on October 16, 2009. This page has links to my paper and my handouts.This was my abstract, from the Unicode conference program for my talk:What twanguage do you tweet ? Twitter, the buzzing conversation of brief web and SMS messsages, exploded into wide use in 2009. But just how wide? To how many countries has it spread? And into which languages? We aimed to find out. Our Twanguages project is a language census on a sample of Twitter's global traffic. Come hear our findings. Which are the top languages? Are #hashtags localised? How does language correlate with location? And which Unicode character is the most rarely used? Accessible to everyone, this talk is especially interesting to students of social media and of quantative language analysis. text/html 2009-10-06T00:02:19+01:00 http://jdlh.com http://jdlh.com/en/doc/2009/tutorial_drupal_joomla_iuc33.html I gave a tutorial, International and multilingual Drupal and Joomla! sites , to the 33rd Internationalization and Unicode Conference on October 14, 2009. This page has links to my slides and handouts. text/html 2009-02-19T15:34:47+01:00 http://jdlh.com http://jdlh.com/en/pr/bc_polyglot_blogs.html Many languages are spoken in British Columbia, Canada. Statistics Canada estimates that 18% of people BC use a language other than English at home (http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/details/page.cfm?Lang=E Geo1=PR Code1=59 Geo2=PR Code2=01 Data=Count SearchText=British%20Columbia SearchType=Begins SearchPR=01 B1=Language Custom=). So it's not surprising there are blogs by BC people, or about BC, which are in languages other than English. This page attempts to catalogue those non-English langage blogs by or about British Columbia.RulesBC focus: Either the blog's writers must be substantially in British Columbia, Canada, or the blog's topic must substantially be about BC.Polyglot: Blog must have substantial original content in a language other than English. Active: Blog must have at least four original non-English posts in the last 12 months. Multilingual: Special recognition for blogs which have substantial content in more than one language. Blog: Must be a blog or other social media form. Websites, even with regular updates, don't count. Should have one or more of: blog or tweet or vlog identity, regular time-based updates, RSS or other feed for following. If in doubt, nominate the site, and we'll adjust the directory to allow for diverse media. This directory is moderated. To submit a blog to the directory, use this website's Contact form for Jim DeLaHunt (en/contact/) to send a message. It helps if you can supply all the information in the table below. We will review it and post. text/html 2009-07-31T00:34:25+01:00 http://jdlh.com http://jdlh.com/en/pr/twanguages.html What twanguage do you tweet ? Twitter, the buzzing conversation of brief web and SMS messsages, exploded into wide use in 2009. But just how wide? To how many countries has it spread? And into which languages? I'm aiming to find out. I've started a project named Twanguages , a language census of a sample of Twitter's global traffic. I'm curious: which are the top languages? Are #hashtags localised? How does language correlate with location? And which Unicode character is the most rarely used? I presented our initial results at the 33rd Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC33) (http://www.unicodeconference.org/), held in San Jose, California, on October 14-16, 2009. Take a look at the @twanguages (http://twitter.com/twanguages) on Twitter for news. Stay tuned!