data-hack-day README

Carl van Tonder <carl@supervacuo.com>

Overview

data-hack-day is a Django application[1] to visualise social media data, started during the OccupyData Hackfest NYC, March 23-24 2012. It currently handles YouTube videos (using the python-gdata YouTube API), and online news articles (RSS, CSV or manual entry), and draws a timeline using d3.js.

Installing

Install on GNU/Linux using:

git clone https://github.com/supervacuo/data-hack-day.git data-hack-day
cd data-hack-day
pip install -r reqirements.txt
cp youtubeparty/local_settings.py{.example,}
python manage.py syncdb
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver

Features

• Automatically import some metadata from YouTube videos and their comments by pasting in the video ID, thanks to the python-gdata YouTube API.
• Create "Media objects" corresponding to online news stories, either by manual entry, CSV upload or RSS parsing (e.g. for use with Google Alerts)
• Manage (edit and delete) "Media objects".
• Bugs and incompleteness (see below)

To-do

• Find a better name for the project (the main instance is likely to be called "Media Lineage"; see our unfortunately-not-buzzwordy-enough-and-thus-unsuccessful-funding-proposal).
• Navigation controls on visualisation.
• Use beeswarm plots for responses.
• Work out some kind of bundling / packing layout for the overall visualisation.
• Bulk add interface for YouTube, Twitter, etc.
• Use Topsy.com API more cleverly; deal with paginated responses and large result sets.
• Implement proper user profile and registration system.
• Date picker widget (tried; failed due to Django bug).
• CSV upload error handling and documentation (or just drop this for the alpha version)
• Non-stupid tree implementation using django-mptt.
• More tests.
• Clean up code, complete transition to class-based views, implement django-guardian carefully in all relevant views.
• etc. etc.
• Fix known bugs (see below).

Bugs

Oh yes there are.

• No security system to speak of. (Don't deploy this on the open internet. I didn't...)
• Rendering strangeness. I still haven't completely got the hang of Twitter's bootstrap framework, so some things look slightly off.

Licence

AGPL

Contributing

HELP!

All patches, ideas gratefully accepted. Fork me (above), Github issues (also above) or e-mail (above; slightly lower down), please.

[1]	It's not reusable yet, sorry...