Big data may be cool, but it’s not pretty. Visual.ly, a startup focused on data visualizations and infographics, has raised a new $2 million round of funding, the company has confirmed to VentureBeat today.
Visual.ly’s platform is like a “basecamp” for design projects that want to utilize big data from multiple sources. It’s clients (brands, businesses, and news organizations) subscribe for access to the platform, which can match them with Visual.ly’s community of over 55,000 designers. Once matched,the designer and the client work together using the platform, with Visual.ly’s team acting as a project manager. Essentially, it answer the question of what do to for companies after they’ve hired a designer and don’t quite know what to do next.
“Right now existing ad agencies are our biggest competitors,” Visual.ly CEO Stew Langille told me in a phone interview. He explained that, in addition to building useful, interactive graphics for clients, Visual.ly is becoming more attractive because it allows designers to earn more money on a project and advertisers to spend less.
Depending on the level of project management, Visual.ly takes anywhere from 10 to 30 percent cut of each project’s total cost. The goal, Langille said, is to improve the collaboration platform for designers and clients to work on their own. And while he didn’t disclose financial figures, Langille did say that Visual.ly’s revenue is increasing 300 percent each quarter, and the number of projects are increasing 200 percent per quarter.
The new round came from previous investors, such as SoftTech VC, 500 Startups, and Giza Venture Capital, as well as strategic investors that include Yammer chief product officer James Patterson and several top executives from the advertising industry that will help Visual.ly build out its presence in New York City.
The additional capital will primarily be used to advance the startup’s data visualization /collaboration technology and hire more talent over the next year. Langille said Visual.ly has held off on raising a larger round, but does plan on raising additional funding in the future.
Langille also said he’d like to use the funding to produce more free data visualization tools that showcase the Visual.ly platform’s potential. For example, the startup’s recently released tool that interfaces with Google Analytics to produce a weekly traffic report, which you can send via email automatically. Also, the startup’s Twitter user battle infographic tool.
Founded in 2011, the San Francisco, Calif.-based startup has raised a total of $4.4 million in funding to date. Visual.ly currently has 25 employees, with plans to hire another 10 to 15 people before the end of 2013.
Siri is a loyal mistress, following you wherever you go — but is she a good listener?
Since the iPhone 4S began coming standard with Siri last October, the voice activated personal assistant has become a cultural phenomenon. Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel star in Siri-themed ads for the phone. A creepy iPhone case forces you to interact with Siri. A different project enables Siri to destroy your phone if it’s lost or stolen, and a viral video shows what happens when Siri goes psycho.
But everyone’s not impressed. In March, a man filed suit against Apple, alleging that Siri “does not perform as advertised.” Anecdotally, many others have complained that Siri doesn’t respond to voice commands and questions as hyped.
Given the controversy, Internet education portal OnlineDegrees.com rounded up a number of studies and statistics from sources including The Wall Street Journal, ABC News and others over the past several months to produce the infographic below. Among the findings: 87% of iPhone 4S owners use Siri at least once per month, with just over half describing themselves as “satisfied” with her performance. Another 9% say they’re not satisfied, while 36% say they’re somewhere between happy and unhappy.
Only two-thirds of users, however, employ Siri for anything beyond searching the web, making a phone call or sending a text. At least 30% of users say they would never use Siri to schedule a metting, play music or even send an email, while just a quarter use Siri to send emails on a daily basis.
Check out the infographic below for more on how iPhone owners do — and don’t — use Siri. Then let us know in the comments — do you think Siri really works?
The debate over the true impact of piracy is likely to intensify between now and this summer, as several of the country’s largest Internet service providers inch closer to voluntarily implementing anti-piracy policies from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
Both the RIAA and MPAA met with several ISPs last July to discuss voluntary policies to discourage internet subscribers from illegally downloading music, movies, video games, and other software. The ISPs participating in the anti-piracy measures — Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon FiOS, Time Warner Cable and others — should be ready to implement the new policies by July 2012, said RIAA Chief Executive Cary Sherman at an event in New York yesterday.
“Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system … (necessary) for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers” Sherman said. “Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion.”
Many people believe that turning ISPs into piracy police will infringe on their right to privacy. The ISPs do have access to everything a person browses on the internet, but they are legally unable to share that information with third-parties without explicit consent from users. Others point out that this is less about wanting to stop digital piracy and more about big media companies’ failure to innovate. On the other side of the fence, copyright holders claim that they’re losing millions of dollars due to piracy.
Piracy does cost content makers a lot of money. In addition to the alleged lost sales, efforts to stop piracy are also costly, as you can see in the infographic below. (Click image to enlarge.)
Next time you write an email subject line, think twice about the words you’re using.
Loading your message with words such as “confirm,” “join,” “press,” or “invite” is not a good idea if you want a response, says data from Baydin, the makers of email plugin Boomerang.
Baydin recently extracted data from five million emails its users handled — either using the company’s “email game” or scheduled for later via Boomerang. It found that some subject-line words, such as “apply” and “opportunity,” got more responses than words from the aforementioned list.
Its data also suggests the best time to send emails is before work. Users who scheduled messages to read later, using Boomerang, most often wanted to deal with them around 6 a.m.
Already sending emails packed with “opportunity” at 6 a.m. and not getting a response? You’re in good company.
Baydin’s average email game player deleted about half of the 147 messages he or she received each day. Ninety minutes of the two hours he or she spent on email each day went to just 12 messages.
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, chezzzers
More About: baydin, Boomerang, email, infographics, trending
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Posters are a great way to cheer up your work space, whether your home office, the walls of your cubicle or even your swanky corner suite.
We’ve got a great selection of geeky posters and prints from classic Apple advertising to curious Android typographical illustrations.
Take a look through the image gallery, click through on the blue title text for more info on each image, and let us know in the comments which posters you’d pick for your office.
We’re big fans of the eBoy group’s pixel art. They’ve created a whole collectible series of city posters that includes North American locations as well as London, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin.
The “Periodic Table of Typefaces” is a witty take on font classification. Also available: “So You Need a Typeface” flowchart and “Typefaces of the World.”
Cost: From $16
4. VectorSetPosters
As well as digital tools for designers, these VectorSets are available as prints. With tons of different sets, you could create a really striking grouping.
The Oatmeal’s “Grammar Pack” includes four great comics: “how to use an apostrophe,” “how to use a semicolon,” “10 words you need to stop misspelling,” and “when to use i.e. in a sentence.” We can’t think of a better set of rules to stick on your wall, especially if you work with words.
We adore Visual Aid’s huge collection of geeky prints. They offer graphical explanations of a huge range of topics including color theory, types of hats, The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones, table settings, flight times and much, much more.
This excellent Etsy poster offers you a field guide to Mac trackpad gestures. Also available is an OS X button legend and a quick reference for shortcuts.
Cost: $20
19. Why Working at Home is Both Awesome and Horrible
More from The Oatmeal with this hilarious comic that explains why working at home is both awesome and horrible. It’s an absolute must for any telecommuter.
iA has mapped the 140 most influential people on Twitter, when they started tweeting and what they first said. Fascinating.
Cost: $59.50
21. Apple’s “Think Different” Posters
Finally, you can still get hold of Apple’s iconic “Think Different” posters on sites like eBay. Some are more rare than others, but just imagine how great the whole set would look framed on your office wall.
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