May 11th, 2010 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, XML
It’s true that Excel has been a decreasing part of my toolkit for several years now, and that I never quite had the love for it that I do for various database managers. But I’m guessing that’s the exception, not the rule, in the broader journalism community. So when it came time to propose a [...]
November 9th, 2009 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, Journalism
Update: Duke’s Sarah Cohen responds in the comments. The intriguing title of a recent report from scholars at Duke is “Accountability Through Algorithm: Developing the Field of Computational Journalism“. Semi-related to CAR, Computational Journalism is defined as “the combination of algorithms, data, and knowledge from the social sciences to supplement the accountability function of journalism.” [...]
June 29th, 2008 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, Journalism
Been awhile since I wrote about Caspio, and since then they’ve only gained more media clients, which I suppose could be a lesson for me. But I think not. Rather, I hope what we’ll see in the months and years to come are the lessons that Matt Wynn offers from his experiences using Caspio. Here’s [...]
April 22nd, 2008 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, General
I was all set to write a tract about why CAR folks should use revision control, but Rachel Greenham has done a fine guide to Subversion for Writers. The same applies to files produced in the CAR process, like SQL snippets and programming scripts. Do yourself a favor and use a revision control system. You’ll [...]
January 23rd, 2008 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, Teaching
Tomorrow marks the beginning of another semester of teaching CAR at George Washington University. It should have been last Thursday, but weather prevented me from getting back from New York in time. One of the issues that people who teach CAR have to deal with is which database manager to use. Most opt for MS [...]