Wharton Grads, Olympic Uniformity, Eigenvalues, Heatmaps and the RGB of Cornflower Blue

Yesterday was a sick day – nasal congestion on par with the iPad-induced streaming lockdown of a week ago. Today, I’m clearing both my inbox and my head to the backdrop of Múm’s Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy

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Brands eager to gain a foothold in the online recruiting space ought to consider eschewing a strong Facebook presence – or so say a handful of Wharton seniors in this fascinating roundtable from Human Resource Executive Online. Says one:

It really takes away from the credibility of the firm, especially because we know Facebook so well — just the connotation that comes with it; it’s not necessarily this professional, reliable tool that you want to use.

Another key point made repeatedly within the article: Young, skilled employees have an innate desire to understand the role that their work plays in the larger objectives of their employer. A point which is, in my own experience, frequently overlooked.

NYC Subway Ridership Visualized

Sha Hwang, from Stamen Design, has recently created a series of though-provoking visualizations on the NYC subway ridership over the last decades. Using a spreadsheet with the annual recorded entries at each station in the NYC subway system, Sha Hwang decided to plot them on an interactive map (using modest maps) applying two different methods: scaled dots (centered on each station) and lines (unifying the different stations). Even though there are some pertinent questions, in the original blog post, as to the danger of extrapolating traffic flow from individual station boarding, this initial experiment is notwithstanding very valuable, since it could help explain many urban and sociological changes in the city over time. (via visualcomplexity.com | NYC Subway Ridership 1905-2006)

Another view of what $1 Billion means

Another view of what $1 Billion means:

The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful

Dotted Lines Surround You (It’s OK, Because they Surround Me, too)

The above video was put together by the good people at Touch – a project based out of the Oslo School of Architecture and Design that is focused on technology that connects mobile devices to real-world objects (Near-Field Communication). The video is intended to illustrate the quiet omnipresence of wireless signals in the spaces that [...]

Contemplating the Soft Infrastructure of Social Media

There are some really intriguing underpinnings of an infrastructure meme at the moment, which I’ll attempt to coalesce around some ongoing social media trends. Please bear with me:
Deepak Kumar, a consultant with the ICFAI Journal of Infrastructure, outlines the distinctions between ‘hard infrastructure’ and ’soft infrastructure’ in these terms1:
(The) infrastructure sector is divided into hard [...]

Utility Utilities

PSFK posts today on Google’s Power Meter initiative.
It’s a fabulous idea, to be sure: Allow anyone with a smart meter to plug into the Google application and retrieve a visualization of their actual power usage, thus enabling users to make informed decisions about their power consumption, and ultimately cut down on both usage and costs [...]