Impure is a new programming language designed to give non-programmers access to professional tools for data visualization. Users can use it to process and display data from social media feeds, financial information and more. Unlike Processing, a simple programming language for data visualization and art, Impure is a completely visual language – there’s no need to learn any code. The programming language is also completely web hosted – there is no development environment to install. It’s sort of like Yahoo! Pipes but for visualization.
Sponsor
Above is a sceenshot of Impure being used to process a Twitter feed. Below is a heat map video created with Impure based on traffic in the Spanish city Zaragoza:
Although it’s targeted at non-programmers, some basic programming knowledge would clearly be useful. The project is currently in alpha and users are being approved slowly. Many of the data structures don’t seem to be available yet, which is frustrating, but that’s the nature of using alpha products.
Given the data deluge that many enterprise face, easy tools for data visualization should be in high demand – especially in areas like social monitoring. This will be one to watch if it can prove easy enough to use.
For some background on the joys of data visualization, check out this TED talk.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.