Find: LG reportedly building first Boot2Gecko phone as Mozilla preps app store

A new entry into the mobile os sweepstakes sounds a lot like chrome os. Makes me think the reported convergence of chrome os and android may be real. 

LG reportedly building first Boot2Gecko phone as Mozilla preps app store

Ars Technica

Mozilla's Web-centric Boot2Gecko (B2G) mobile platform is maturing at a rapid pace. As we reported earlier this month, the operating system has already attracted hardware partners and will be demoed at the upcoming Mobile World Congress event. Mozilla is also planning to unveil its new application storefront, called the Mozilla Marketplace, which will allow third-party developers to sell applications that are built with standards-based Web technologies.

A new report from ExtremeTech cites anonymous sources who say that LG is one of Mozilla's hardware partners. The company is said to be working towards the launch of a developer-focused smartphone that will ship with an early version of the B2G operating system.

Spottted: Epinome: A Visual-Analytics Workbench for Epidemiology Data

T-M Rhyne used to work at Ncsu. 

Epinome: A Visual-Analytics Workbench for Epidemiology Data

IEEE CG&A

Early detection and rapid response to infectious-disease outbreaks rely on effective decision making based on information from disparate sources. To improve decision-making in outbreak detection and response, it's important to understand how public health practitioners seek relevant information. Epinome, a user-centric visual-analytics system, supports research on decision-making in public health, particularly evaluation of information search strategies. Epinome facilitates investigation of scripted high-fidelity large-scale simulated disease outbreaks. Its dynamic environment seamlessly evolves and adapts as the user's tasks and focus change. This video shows how the Epinome system facilitates interactive simulations of disease outbreaks.

Spotted: PrePrint: Automated Box-Cox Transformations for Improved Visual Encoding

With Bill Cleveland, a pioneer in statistical graphics. 

PrePrint: Automated Box-Cox Transformations for Improved Visual Encoding

IEEE CS TVCG

This concept of pre-conditioning data (utilizing a power transformation as an initial step) for analysis and visualization is well established within the statistical community and is employed as part of statistical modeling and analysis. Such transformations condition the data to various inherent assumptions of statistical inference procedures, as well as making the data more symmetric and easier to visualize and interpret. In this paper, we explore the use of the Box-Cox family of power transformations to semi-automatically adjust visual parameters. We focus on time series scaling, axis transformations and color binning for choropleth maps. We illustrate the usage of this transformation using various examples, and discuss the value and some issues in semi-automatically using these transformations for more effective data visualization.      

Skimmed: Interactive Dynamics for Visual Analysis

Nice survey of visual analytics. 

Interactive Dynamics for Visual Analysis

ACM Queue

A taxonomy of tools that support the fluent and flexible use of visualizations    

Find: A fresh new look for HTML5Rocks.com

Looks like a good resource. 

A fresh new look for HTML5Rocks.com

Google Code Blog

By Eric Bidelman, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google Chrome Team

Over the past year, HTML5Rocks.com has become a top destination for developers craving to learn more about HTML5. Today, we have over 60 articles and tutorials covering the latest HTML5 tech, published by 30 contributors from around the world! We've worked hard to bring great content to the site as quickly as possible, but it's been challenging to consolidate so much information as HTML5 continues to push the web forward and evolve at an accelerated pace.

Today, we're launching an updated HTML5Rocks with better tools for finding content, including an edgy new look and "rocking" logo. As our content expands, finding things becomes more important. To address this, we've created "persona pages" with catered content in 3 different verticals (Games, Business, Mobile). If you're one of those developers, finding content relevant to you should now be a snap. We've also consolidated many of the different components (Updates, Studio, Playground) into the main site and have deeply integrated the HTML5 technology classes to bring a better identity to the content.

All in all, it's a little bit Punk and a little bit Rock and Roll.

Lastly, if you're interested in contributing to the site, it's an open source project and we'd love to have your expertise. See our contributors guide.

Eric Bidelman is a Senior Developer Programs Engineer on the Google Chrome Team and a core contributor to html5rocks.com. He is the author of the book Using the HTML5 Filesystem API.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Find: Landing in Las Vegas

Detail on google apis, including calendar. Good to see that the Goog has a sense of humor. Beam me up!

Landing in Las Vegas

Google Code Blog

Post by Peter Deng, Product Marketing Manager

Come celebrate 40 years of Star Trek at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention -- and while you're at it, learn more about Google APIs. Our API teams will be on hand at the confab in Las Vegas today through Sunday. Besides unveiling KML support for Google Maps for mobile, we'll be doing live demos of Google Earth KML, the Google AJAX Search API, Google Calendar's data API, and the Google Gadgets API.

Hope to see you there, preferably in a uniform. But if you can't appear in person, just transport yourself.