Miso project begins open source releases

A DataSet based visualisation of Cabinet Office spending created as part of the Miso Project UK newspaper The Guardian, in a joint project with web development consultants Bocoup, has announced the open sourcing of the first component of their Miso project: DataSet. The project aims to build an open source toolkit which makes it easier to create interactive storytelling using data visualisation as part of its content. It is also supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

DataSet provides a foundation for future libraries in the Miso Project as it offers a client-side framework for traversing, manipulating and managing data that is to be visualised. It assists with loading and parsing data from, for example, csv files, and then creating views which will update when the data changes. It also offers standard calculations such as min, max and averages. The developers hope to expand it with additional importers, parsers and computational capabilities in the future. Tutorials and API documentation are also available.

Examples of uses of DataSet include a d3- and backbone.js-based interactive map of spending and a graph derived from polling Twitter. DataSet is released under a dual MIT and GPLv2 licence and the code is available from a GitHub repository.

(djwm)