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A Chart is Worth 96,000 Collisions

Gigabyte upon gigabyte of data is collected every day in our high-tech society. Unfortunately it's virtually useless in its raw form; it needs to be analyzed for patterns and/or "exceptions" to patterns. When studying the over 96,000 automobile collisions that took place in New York City during an entire year, data visualization can help.

Published: 7 Mar 2024

Scraping for Real Facts

Question: How does someone distinguish between "real" facts and the other kind ("alternative" facts)? Answer: Look for trustworthy news sources. One source I recommend is fact-checking websites. Complaint: People don't have time to check all those sites individually. Response: They don't have to! One solution is to use web scraping to regularly retrieve the latest entries. Oh, and BTW, it's even possible to do it in a way that's legal and ethical.

Published: 10 Jan 2024

Projects

fStop Images

fStop Images screenshot

fStop Images is a royalty-free photo agency. It is unique in that the image collections are centered around designers (who also happened to be photographers) instead of around generic categories.

The initial site development and launch were managed by the client, Berlin-based FontShop International. The site concept and graphic design were developed by San Francisco-based Punchcut. Technical design and implementation were done by (at the time Geneva-based) me.

CDweb

CDweb screenshot

The CDweb Extranet was a central location for Boehringer Ingelheim's corporate design (CD) guidelines. A content manager could edit, preview and publish guidelines and related design elements such as logos and templates. External consultants and design agencies could submit content for approval and publishing by the content manager. By storing guidelines in a Web-based format, CDweb reduced the time and cost of editing and distributing CD documentation to the appropriate Boehringer Ingelheim employees and affiliated companies worldwide.

Kids' Books Bolivia

Kids' Books Bolivia screenshot

Kids' Books Bolivia was the name of a series of multilingual children's books, researched and written by undergraduate students of the SIT Study Abroad Program, who spent a semester in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

The WordPress-based website highlighted the books, authors and news. I developed a responsive theme, a few simple plugins, and I managed content in English and Spanish (using the WPML multilanguage plugin).

ERA

ERA screenshot

ERA was a concept and set of tools to simplify the corporate design development process. The acronym ERA stands for Elements, Rules, and Applications, and the concept describes the relationships between graphical applications (like brochures and business cards) and the elements they contain (like logos and grids).

ERA was conceived by Paul Paulousek and Charly Frech. I worked with them at MetaDesign, and I implemented a client/server system allowing designers to develop corporate design guidelines and publish them on the web.

About

This site is the online business presence of yours truly, Jim Rudolf. My activities are a combination of the three roles listed at the top right, in roughly that order of precedence.

The site was built using the Lektor static site generator. Thanks to Couleur for the blueberries.