Gapminder was discussed during the Goa workshop in July, here is a relevant cut from the summary that was sent out by Sundeep:
“GapMinder was presented by Greg Rowles from HISP South Africa. This is a very interesting data visualization tool that has been developed by Dr. Hans Rossling’s group from Karolinska Institute, in Sweden. Basically, the tool allows for a dynamic visualization of two related variables in relation to a reference variable such as population which is depicted as bubbles with the size of it indicating the relative values. It was pointed out that this tool is an online system that draws upon google serves. Saptarishi pointed out that this can be subverted by caching the google services for the particular country that is being analyzed. Bob pointed out to potential intellectual property infringement concerns. The tool was liked significantly by all, and it was agreed that Bharath and Saptarishi would explore how it may be integrated with the dashboard of DHIS2.”
Ok, I had not read this, obviously. Has any progress been made? Some thinking may be required on how to best integrate - I chose report tables because in a motion chart you obviously want to have more than one numerical variable (i.e. a crosstab of indicators or data elements). It would make sense to relate this to the current JFreeChart options. And also make all charting possibilities readily available from other places in DHIS 2, such as from data entry, since people would often like to visualize what they have just painstakingly entered.
We certainly should look at offline caching possibilities. But I don’t think it is a showstopper to have to be online either - we have many users who are. Here is a range of other interactive charts we should evaluate for suitability:
http://www.amcharts.com/ (not FOSS, but free with a small logo, works offline)
http://chart.inetsoft.com/gallery.html
http://www.ajaxline.com/10-best-flash-and-silverlight-chart-controls
http://www.swivel.com/
Greg told us that in SA they have been working with Gapminder integration and if I remember correctly have a copy of the code for the previous (pre Google?) version of the app.
I though this was called Google trend analyser now. Is Google motion charts just the same thing or different somehow?
Motion Charts is the new name of Trendalyzer:
http://blogstats.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/trendalyzer-becomes-motion-chart/
Here is a good recent article on motion chart use:
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-google-analytics-motion-charts-to-maximize-results-24146
Here is a java plugin for motion chart, with source code:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/SONAR/Motion+Chart+plugin
On that note, we also really have to improve our ability to easily import data from various sources - which people will very much want to do now that we have excellent GIS and charting capabilities. I found the Swivel Toolbar for Excel to be helpful in transforming crosstabbed matrix data into relational table format, but that is just the first step.
http://www.google.ch/search?q=swivel+toolbar
Knut
···
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Ola Hodne Titlestad olatitle@gmail.com wrote:
Ola
2009/10/10 Knut Staring knutst@gmail.com
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Saptarshi Purkayastha sunbiz@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Knut,
I think Bharath has written a module that takes the data and indicators from DHIS2 and displays a motion chart. The only quirk is that you have to be online to be able to see the motion chart, which is a Google lockin to be able to use its docs API.
RIght, that’s what I thought. Is that module available somewhere? Any reason its existence has not been communicated widely?
Knut
Regards,
Saptarshi PURKAYASTHA
Director R & D, HISP India
Health Information Systems Programme
My Tech Blog: http://sunnytalkstech.blogspot.com
You Live by CHOICE, Not by CHANCE
2009/10/10 Knut Staring knutst@gmail.com
I have quickly set up a proof of concept (using PHP) for displaying DHIS 2 indicators in Google Motion Charts here:
http://97.107.142.53/mc/index.php
I don’t know (and doubt) that this will work offline (the current solution relies on Google’s servers to provide a Javascript API and serve the Flash app).
Reference:
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery/motionchart.html#Motion_Chart_initial_state
I attach my PHP code, which I hope can serve as inspiration for someone on our team (India? VN?) to implement the same functionality as a DHIS web module in Java.
Knut
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Cheers,
Knut Staring
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Cheers,
Knut Staring