Posted: September 25th, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Projects | Tags: brand, culture, events, foursquare, location, uitburo, utrecht | 1 Comment »
The Utrechts Uitburo —the cultural promotion and scheduling agency of the city of Utrecht— has received the first Dutch brand page on Foursquare via our mediation (tweet). Further integration and content enrichment is forthcoming.

The news has been picked up by Emerce and Dutchcowboys among other publications.
Posted: September 25th, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Vervuilingsalarm | Tags: award, eParticipatie, nomination | No Comments »
Our old project Vervuilingsalarm unexpectedly got nominated for this years eParticipation Award, an award that showcases successful examples of public services.
The project was a proof of concept protoytype whipped together in a very brief time presciently using Google App Engine and Pachube both of which have grown leaps and bounds since then. Vervuilingsalarm is a concept that shows how you can use standard web technology and scraping to hook sensors into the wider web of data to modernize them and to help others build upon them. That it is still running nicely without any maintenance is a testament to the solidity of Google App Engine.
We would love for attention and funding to expand the project into a wider sensor network with more data patches, interaction and sharing built in to become a hub for Dutch environmental measurements while continuing to use the strength of external services such as Pachube and others.
Posted: September 25th, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Talks | Tags: Amsterdam, API, gaming, hacking, open data, politics, society | 5 Comments »
For an upcoming presentation at the Club of Amsterdam on the Future of Hacking, Alper will be presenting on an intersection of APIs, public information and game design titled: “Civic duty in a hyper-connected worldâ€
Brief:
The Internet of Things is an abstract term for something that is quickly becoming real. The world is being filled with sensors and actuators, all of which are linked into systems and being fed back to us with real and virtual displays. This is changing the fabric of society and the definition of what society is. It is our responsibility as citizens of this hyper-connected world to hack our environments to work better however we can.
Hope to see you there and have a lively discussion on this topic.
Posted: September 25th, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Inspiration | Tags: animation, stock market, television, vpro | No Comments »
Not a dataviz at all, but an abstract evocative animation by Onesize for VPRO’s Quants: “the alchemists of Wall Streetâ€.
The abstractness of the direction was deliberatly kept abstract and not explanatory, because only few people really understand the way Quants work and think.
So purely for visual effect (I would argue wholly against the quote above), but still nice at that.
Curious about the stuff catalogtree have been working on for what I believe is the same series but I haven’t kept track of television for ages now. (via @gertjan)
Posted: September 25th, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Events | 2 Comments »
We thought it would be an interesting challenge to hold an informal data event on the fringe of PICNIC after three days of conferencing. Thus were born the Dutch Data Drinks on Friday, September 24th in the Ketelhuis. We couldn’t have imagined that it would become such a success.
We had 30+ people cross-cutting disciplines from academia, business, policy, design and technology from Amsterdam and outside. Discussions were lively and ranged from the most technical to the more ideological.

What is definitive is that there will be a follow-up. Interest for the event was plentiful, but tonight was mired with scheduling conflicts. The next one will probably have a brief program of lightning talks, but will then also be largely focused on getting people interacting with each other. Ideas, projects, venue suggestions and sponsorship welcome!
Thanks to all those that attended, and to James Burke for encouraging the organization.
Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: PvdA Canvassing | Tags: campaign, Google App Engine, Google Charts API, Google Maps, politics, pvda | 1 Comment »
The PvdA (the Dutch Labour Party) has sent campaigners to canvas neighborhoods and ask inhabitants their opinion on area and the direction of the country.
We imported over 10’000 records collected by volunteers into a map and aggregated results by city and by postal code. This makes it easy to browse through and drill down into the surveyed areas and see what the local issues are.
PvdA Survey Website


Attention:Â NOS.nl
Process: “Online campagnes — Canvassen voor de PvdAâ€
Creator: Alper Cugun
Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Dutchstats | Tags: atlas, CBS, Eclipse, GDAL, GeoJSON, Geotools, mapping, municipal, OGR, Processing, Processing.js, statistics | No Comments »
Dutchstats is a statistical tool to compare election results and other key statistics on the municipal level for the Netherlands. It allows any value that can be mapped to a municipality to be visualized and will be released as an open source framework.

Attention: Open Data Network, VVOJ
Process: “Dutchstats — Your personal Atlas of the Netherlands†and “Dutchstats – Je persoonlijke atlas van Nederlandâ€
Creators: Alper Cugun, Alexander Zeh
Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Vervuilingsalarm | Tags: environment, Google App Engine, Google Charts API, Google Maps, mapping, Pachube, particulates, scraping, sensor | No Comments »
Vervuilingsalarm is an aggregator of particulate predictions for a series of measuring stations in the Netherlands. The data is scraped, aggregated, plotted and graphed and also sent out to sensor hub Pachube.

Creators: James Burke, Ton Zijlstra, Alper Cugun, Buro Pony
Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Table Viewer | Tags: ar, Google App Engine, marker, music, music hackday, physical, Processing.js, projection, Python, Quartz Composer, reacTIVision, social, table, Twisted | No Comments »
We want to help ad-hoc groups of people in the same location to compare their music tastes and see where the overlaps and where the holes are. The table is a turn-taking jukebox with tangible interactions and nice visuals for its users and spectators.

Attention: First prize by last.fm (tweet) on Amsterdam Music Hackday 2010
Process: “Table Viewer for Music Hackdayâ€
Creators: Alexander Zeh, Alper Cugun, Dirk van Oosterbosch
Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Author: alper | Filed under: Silence Landscapes | Tags: 3d, art, environment, mapping, Processing, Python, Sketchup, sound, Sunflow, terrain, unlekkerLib | No Comments »
Landscapes in two and three dimensions generated from sound measurements made by artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck for her project Een Dijk van een Kust in the free-range park in Monnickendam.


Process: “Creating an audiogeography from walks through the silence†and “A Landscape Generated From Silenceâ€
Attention:Â Bright.nl
Creators: Sarah van Sonsbeeck, Alper Cugun, Kars Alfrink