Swivel was founded last year (December 2005) but I just ran across it (thanks to Glyn Moody). Although it's a year old, it's still in preview mode and should launch next week. From the site:
We built Swivel because we wanted a Web site for data.
Like many business folks, we had spent a bunch of time editing spreadsheets, reading other people's spreadsheets and emailing spreadsheets back and forth. We had learned a bunch of macros, shortcuts and tricks for editing data. However, when it came time to share data with other people - so they could explore the data themselves - it was...less good. We, unfortunately, had to freeze the data in the form of a document or presentation because only other power users could really go nuts exploring the data....
[W]hen we say Swivel is a Web site for data we're talking about those three things:
we use farms of powerful computers and algorithms at the Swivel data centers to transform a lonely grid of numbers and letters into hundreds - sometimes thousands - of graphs that can be explored and compared with any other public data in Swivel
we have ratings and comments and publishing shortcuts for bloggers, so folks can share ideas, talk about insights and understand data together
we transform the sometimes tedious task of reading someone else's spreadsheet into a fun experience of clicking through a Web site full of images, graphs and color.
If you upload data for the public, Swivel is free.
If you upload data and choose to keep it private and secure, there will be a fee....
Swivel lets you explore data and share your insights with others. Swivel has data about politics, economics, weather, sports, business and more....
Once you find an interesting graph, share it. Swivel makes it easy to post great graphs to your blog or link to a graph through email. When other folks see your graph it's not just a dull image —no way! People can click it and start their own cycle of exploring, comparing and sharing.
Post a graph on your blog
Email a graph link to your friends and colleagues.
Have folks click on your graph and explore and compare the data themselves.
Keep track of how many times people have viewed and clicked on your graphs.
Swivel is designed for sharing....
Here's Michael Arrington's description from TechCrunch:
Swivel Co-founders Dmitry Dimov and Brian Mulloy start off by describing their company as “YouTube for Data.” That’s a good start for someone trying to understand it, because the site allows users to upload data - any data - and display it to other users visually. The number of page views your website generates. Or a stock price over time. Weather data. Commodity prices. The number of Bald Eagles in Washington state. Whatever. Uploaded data can be rated, commented and bookmarked by other users, helping to sort the interesting (and accurate) wheat from the chaff. And graphs of data can be embedded into websites....
But then the real fun begins. You and other users can then compare that data to other data sets to find possible correlation (or lack thereof)....And better yet, Swivel will be automatically comparing your data to other data sets in the background, suggesting possible correlations to you that you may never have noticed.
Academic types are going to go nuts over this. I spent a summer in college running regression analysis models on economic data. Being able to simply upload data to Swivel and then begin to slice and dice the data would have saved a lot of time. And being able to compare our data to what others were doing in related fields could have yielded results that we would never have aimed for....
Look for Swivel to launch later this week after a year of quiet development....
Comment. Swivel isn't just a home for OA data. It's a tool to automate the process of comparing data, turning data into active or clickable graphs, sharing data, and rating, discussing, and analyzing data. I hope OA-minded scientists will try Swivel for their scientific data and that science-minded OA activists will try Swivel for their data about OA. I have two reasons: I want to *use* data about OA in this easy and flexible way, and I want OA data to become so transparently useful that it will inspire others to make their data OA as well.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/06/2006 01:22:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
