If you’ve been following this blog, you probably know that the past 6 months have been very busy. Now, this year’s Imagine Cup is over and it’s definitely a success!

This year, we were participating in 2 categories – Software Design and Mashup. Besides the additional difficulty of developing and managing two unrelated projects, we had an additional challenge: distance! Let me explain: while Bruno and I are studying in France, Eduardo is in Brazil. Conclusion: the first time Eduardo met Bruno was in Egypt! (Note how we had to craft our team picture…)

In spite of that, we managed to build two great projects. Let’s start by the Software Design project, HealthTag.

HealthTag is a healthcare support system specially tailored for isolated locations. It allows the doctor to access the patient’s data from his/her mobile device, being able to analyse and modify the patient’s records even without cell phone signal or an internet connection. The data is stored in the cloud (HealthVault and Windows Azure) and can be synchronized when a connection is available. There’s also a desktop module for management and registration. The system also provides an analysis module that aggregates all the patient information and allows researchers and decision takers to make conclusions and create strategies for their regions of interest, using a collaborative touchless or multi-touch interface. For a more thorough explanation, check out the video below:

Note: This video is also available in Portuguese at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd3-H_oRMHw

This project was built with constant feedback from NGOs, doctors, healthcare companies and researchers to create a better experience and adapt to their needs. They showed enthusiasm and interest in the project, and we really hope it will become reality soon.

Our Mashup project has been more widely announced in this blog; it’s KnoWorld.

KnoWorld is a data analysis platform built using Popfly. It aims to enable everyone to access world indicators and create analysis for curiosity, research and learning. It’s tailored for easy consumption and creation of visualizations (“mashups”) that use more than 200 indicators from the Gapminder NGO and cross them with other indicators, maps, and events. Besides, thanks to Popfly, users are able to “tweak” visualizations (modify settings and create related conclusions), and “rip” them (discover how they were made and modify the building blocks). This project was the subject of a large series of posts, articles and videos that can be found at the KnoWorld blog.

This project had an overwhelming success. We’ve seen the community grow in front of our (virtual) eyes, the project was used in an actual classroom, and we’ve received great feedback from all the users that tried it.

Unfortunately, we’ve come to know that Popfly is closing in August 24th. That means that (at least for now) KnoWorld is closing. We hope to be able to rebuild it using other platforms, but we know already that a lot will be lost without the Popfly community and its “mashability”. Even though, we’re happy for being able to create this amazing experience and hope you’ve enjoyed it while it lasted!

Results

Our projects have been extremely successful in the world finals!

• HealthTag was
• 3rd place in Software Design and
• 1st place in the Windows Mobile Award
• KnoWorld was
•  4th in the Mashup competition

Also, the Brazilian delegation has attained the top spot in the Imagine Cup as whole! Special congratulations to all of our teams:

• Levv IT – 1st place in Game Development
• Willburn – 1st place in Design
• ProAtiva – 1st place in the Interoperability Award
• IC – UNICAMP – 2nd place in the Tablet Accessibility Award
• Thiago Valverde – 4th place in the IT Challenge
• A Casa Amarela – 4th place in Short Film
• OpenLab – 7th place in Embedded Development

Special thanks

Of course none of this could ever be possible without the help of a lot of people. I’d like to thank the Microsoft (Brazil/LatAm/Corp) teams, the Imagine Cup team, the Bradesco support team, the Brazilian press team (Rede Record) that supported us in the finals. Very special thanks to all the friends and family that supported us, and to the new friends from Brazil and from all over the world. And most of all, thank you team Virtual Dreams – Bruno, Eduardo and Bruno!

I really hope to see you in Warsaw next summer!

Thank you!

Roberto

Hey there!

Since we were announced as finalists in the Imagine Cup, many things have changed in KnoWorld. Now the project has a strong and growing community; we were able to impact several people, including schools; and we contacted much more people than we could ever imagine! This post aims to sum up the state of the KnoWorld community and its impacts as of now.

Note: the view counts come from our server stats, FeedBurner stats, Popfly stats and YouTube stats. The full server report is available here.

First, the team initiatives:

• Articles: We have written two articles about KnoWorld and how to use it, and we also posted our Round 1 Master Plan PPT. They were read almost 1400 times!
  • Introduction to KnoWorld – 916 views
  • Tutorial – 342 views
  • Round 1 Master Plan PPT – 138 views
• Videos: The team has produced 6 videos about KnoWorld, with more than 800 views:
  • An introductory tutorial – 360 views
  • A series of 3 videos called “KnoWorld – Instant knowledge”
    • Tweak a mashup in 30 seconds – 135 views
    • Who has more cell phones – Brazil or South Africa? – 95 views
    • How to build a map mashup – 31 views
  • Two videos recorded in the classroom at a Brazilian high school
    • Excerpts of the lesson and student testimonials – 68 views
    • The teacher’s testimonial – 84 views
  • A playlist contains all of these videos and will have all our future videos as well: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=61363421F6D9C196 – 54 views
• Mashups: The team has created 11 mashups just to show a small sample of the potential of KnoWorld. They had a total of more than 2350 views combined!
  • MDG 6 – Tuberculosis in the world – 16 views
  • Unemployment in Europe – 14 views
  • MDG Infant mortality rate – 195 views
  • Cell phones in developing countries – Brazil vs South Africa – 26 views
  • Children out of School in India and Australia – for TaraEd – 53 views
  • Destruction of Forests – 141 views
  • HIV Evolution in Africa – 526 views
  • Population of France – 432 views
  • US CO2 Emissions vs Environmental Events – 433 views
  • Top 10 arms importers in 2005 – 283 views
  • MDG Children out of School – 257 views
• Blog posts: The KnoWorld blog has currently:
  • 10 posts (including this)
  • A total of more than 900 web views since its launch (excluding the 2 articles above). (See here how we got to this number, and the full server report for the detailed stats.)
  • And amazingly more than 1000 views via RSS in the last 30 days ! (via Feedburner)
• Twitter: We’ve posted 10 tweets about KnoWorld in Twitter in each of our accounts: @robertos_br and @bfreis. This campaign has largely impacted our viral spread! (Check the next section for more details)
• Facebook: We’ve created a Facebook group with news and links, which has more than 100 members today. A significant part of our views came from Facebook.
• ProgrammableWeb: KnoWorld has been posted on ProgrammableWeb, where it was seen 71 times, had a rating of 5.0, was featured as “Popular Mashup” and even posted to Twitter!

And of course, a sample of the community responses:

• Mashups: KnoWorld’s spread can of course be seen by the growth of its usage. Many users have shared their KnoWorld mashups, some are really insightful! We highlight some of them here:
  • Greatest sugar consumptions by brunods
  • Sugar consumption – World by brunods
  • BRIC – External Debt by Ezequiel
  • Vaccines effect on Mortality rate in US by ahirata
  • Oil consumption vs CO2 Emission in Brazil by BSonnino
  • Air accidents – country 2009 by Carla
  • japan population by jowe
  • Nascimentos No Brasil by paulors
  • Aids by r1cs1
• Articles and blog posts: KnoWorld has been featured in some blogs and even on a Microsoft Education website and newsletter!
  • KnoWorld was featured in the June-July edition of the Microsoft Faculty connection newsletter, which is sent to hundreds of professors all over Brazil!
  • Microsoft Faculty Connection Brazil
  • Dielson Rocha
  • IntelFusion
  • MVP Bruno Sonnino
  • Sylvia Guimarães
  • Rafael Barbolo
  • ProgrammableWeb blog
  • DomainMacher
• Twitter: Twitter has been a great tool for our viral growth. Posts and videos about KnoWorld have been tweeted and retweeted several times, by many people all over the world. Some users who have posted or retweeted about KnoWorld once or more:
  • @programmableweb
  • @Imagine_Cup (the official Imagine Cup Twitter)
  • @yuridc
  • @barbolo
  • @son1cm4yh3m
  • @hugowt
  • @botequilha
  • @rickdog

So as you can see, KnoWorld is now more than 2 students and 1 mentor, some Popfly blocks and a handful of mashups: we’re a community. There are now students studying with KnoWorld, teachers using it, interested people learning from it, ideas being created, and awareness about the 8 MDGs being spread!

Thanks to everyone who’s been using KnoWorld and let’s keep it up!!!

Team Virtual Dreams
Bruno França dos Reis
Roberto Sonnino

The third video of our “Instant knowledge” series.

For more videos, check our YouTube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=61363421F6D9C196

Thanks!
Roberto

Hello there,

We have exciting news: KnoWorld is being used in the classroom!

A high school Geography teacher in Brazil has tried KnoWorld to improve his classes and get his students more interested. It was a great success!

In these videos, you can check out some excerpts from his lesson and testimonials from students and the teacher himself:

Should you need help to use KnoWorld to study or teach, feel free to contact us!

Thanks!

Roberto

Hey there!

Another mashup to our (growing) collection: here we have a simulation of the official UN MDG Monitor for the MDG 4 – child mortality rate, made with KnoWorld.
The advantage here is that with KnoWorld we can use data up until 2008 instead of being limited to the years displayed in the monitor!
So here you have it; in just a few seconds, transforming data in knowledge:

[Mashup removed - Popfly is closing]

If you want, you can see how it was made by ripping it!

More news coming very soon…

Thanks!
Roberto

The second video of our “Instant knowledge” series.

Thanks for watching!
Roberto

First video of the “Instant knowledge” series. More coming soon!

If you tweak a mashup, don’t forget to save and post the link!

Thanks!

Roberto

Hi everyone!

Now in the final days in the Imagine Cup Mashup competition, we’d like to invite everyone to know more about our world through KnoWorld! Our idea is to build a library of interesting Mashups and visualizations for everyone to use. With your creativity and data from more than 200 world indicators, you can help us reach the UN MDGs through your mashups!

It’s very easy: just go to Popfly.com, create a Mashup using the KnoWorld blocks (just search for “knoworld”), and share the link with us!

If this is your first contact with Popfly and KnoWorld, check out these links to learn more:

• Introductory article: http://virtualdreams.com.br/blog/2009/04/knoworld-know-your-world-to-transform-it/
• Tutorial: http://virtualdreams.com.br/blog/2009/04/knoworld-and-popfly-tutorial/
• Video tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SQPeq9_7c4&fmt=22
• Some of our mashups (Tweak or Rip them!): CO2 emissions, Population of France, Destruction of forests, HIV in Africa, Top 10 arms importers in 2005, MDG Children out of School

You can also follow us through the KnoWorld blog and our Twitter accounts: @robertos_br and @bfreis.

More news coming this weekend… stay tuned!

Thanks and we hope to hear from you soon!

Roberto and Bruno

KnoWorld can answer:

[Mashup removed - Popfly is closing]

You can easily create your own mashups and visualizations with KnoWorld too! Check the tutorial and video, and please leave a comment if you have any questions.

See you!
Roberto

Click here to view the embedded video.

More info: http://virtualdreams.com.br/blog/2009/04/knoworld-know-your-world-to-transform-it/

So now you’ve heard all about KnoWorld, and you want to try out some visualizations. But how?

First of all, it’s important to know that KnoWorld lives inside a website called Popfly. This site allows you to create mashups with data from many different sources (like Facebook, Live Search and Flickr), filter and mash these data, and show them in interesting visualizations like photo carousels, interactive lists, or maps.

So basically what you have to do is to create an account or sign in at Popfly using your Windows Live ID (the same you use for Messenger, Hotmail, Spaces…). After that you can already start mashing up!

If you’ve never used Popfly, check out this video tutorial to see how easy it is to create a basic mashup – it only takes 30 seconds!

http://www.popfly.com/Videos/?video=ThirtySecond

A more detailed (22 min) introduction can be seen at

http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideo.aspx?video=86527

When you’re in Popfly, start by clicking Create and then Mashup near the top right corner to open the Mashup Creator.

In this tutorial we’re going to explain you Popfly and KnoWorld while we recreate the US CO2 Emissions vs Environmental Events mashup we presented in our previous post.

Starting your mashup

So to start your mashup with the KnoWorld blocks simply search for “knoworld” in the block list on the left. You’ll find all of our blocks, and they’ll be ready to be dragged to the main area.

The basic data block is called Gapminder. This block can get data from all of our available indicators (full list at http://tinyurl.com/gap-ind). You can select your data by country (that will get a historic timeline for that country) or by a specific year (which will get the data for all the countries in that year). Here we will use it to get the CO2 emissions historic data for the US.

The main visualization is the Timeplot block. This one allows you to plot indicators in a line graph and mark events in the graph, allowing you to understand the relationship between the events and the indicator. Here we will use this block as means to visualize the indicator along with the events.

Let’s try a simple example: in the mashup creator, drag the Gapminder block to the main white area – it will show up as a spinning cube. After, drag the Timeplot block to the main area as well.

The next step is to configure the blocks to get the data we want. In the Gapminder block, click the small wrench icon ( ) or double-click the block to configure it. You will see something like this:

In the Operations list in the top left corner, you can choose if you want to get the data by year or by country. Here we’ll select by country to get data from the United States. Next, type in the boxes the parameters we want. In this case, type “co2 emissions (tonnes per person)” in the Indicator box, and “united states” as country. Click OK to confirm.

The next step is to connect the two block to show the Gapminder data in the Timeplot visualization. To do that, click the Gapminder block – a blue arrow will appear – and then click the Timeplot block. The blocks are now connected and you can configure the Timeplot block to show the data the way you want.

Click the small wrench in the Timeplot block to select how the data will be displayed. We want the years from Gapminder to be used as dates in the graph, and the values should be shown accordingly. Use the boxes to connect the correct data to the correct places, like this:

Now you’re ready to test your Mashup! Click OK if you haven’t already and click the green “Run” button to see what happens. It may take some time to load…

Showing some events

Now all that’s left is to display the events. To add events to your mashup, go back to the “Edit” mode and double-click the Timeplot block. You can add events directly by typing their dates directly in the eventDates box, and by typing their titles in the eventTitles box, separated by commas.

To add a large quantity of events, it’s more convenient to grab them from another block (such as an RSS feed) or to use a data block (the “yellow block”). In this case we’ll build a data block to store our events.

To build a yellow block, save your mashup by clicking the “Save” button, give it a name and description, and click OK. Then go to the “Create” menu and select “Mashup Data” to create a data block. This block acts just like a table to hold your data – just type the column headers in the first line separated by a comma, and type the data in the big box accordingly. Be careful not to use apostrophes (‘), commas (,) or quotes (“) in the data, because these characters are treated differently from the rest of the text.

So, in your data block, type in (or copy-paste) the events and dates, like this:

If you want, you can download the events we’ve used in the sample from this file to paste them into your block.

Save your data block by clicking “Save” and use the “My Stuff” –> Projects menu to go back to the mashup. There, click in the “Actions” link under your mashup and select “Edit” to open the Mashup Creator.

Now drag your yellow block from the blocks list (it should be near the end) and connect it to the Timeplot block. In the Timeplot configuration, select the appropriate values and that’s it!

Now you have a full featured mashup that displays data and events together! You can share it through the “Share” button and copy the link, or even put it into your site or blog with the “Embed” code. If you used a data block, don’t forget to share it as well or users might not be able to see your mashup.

This was only a small introduction to what can be done with Popfly and KnoWorld.  For example, you could also use other blocks to filter or sort the data (for example, show only the data from a specific interval), show it in maps or display flags for the countries, and much more! In Popfly, every mashup can be “ripped”, so you can see how it was made and change it. Please rip our mashups for a sample of what can be done with KnoWorld, and see how it’s done!

We hope you liked it, and we definitely hope you’ll use our blocks and spread the word. If you have doubts, ideas, questions or suggestions, please drop a comment in this post and we’ll help you. Also, if you have an idea but don’t know how to do it in Popfly, drop a comment and we might be able to help you to make it come true!

Finally, for more detailed information, you can download our official presentation along with all the links, explanations and ideas by clicking this link.

Thank you!

Virtual Dreams – Mashup team

• Bruno França dos Reis
• Roberto Sonnino
• Eduardo Sonnino

UPDATE: Check the KnoWorld blog for more ideas, videos and updates!

Hi there!

Take a look at this graph:

This graph shows the CO2 emissions in the US over the 20th century. Now, an intriguing question: why did the emissions rate decrease sharply just when it was at its peak?

To answer this question, we present you KnoWorld – our Imagine Cup ‘09 project in the Mashup category.

KnoWorld is a system that allows you to easily access and analyze world data such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita or Infant Mortality Rates.  With our project, you can visualize all these data through graphs and maps and compare them with actual events to analyze their causes and consequences. Make innovative conclusions and transform your world!

The main idea is to be able to mark a graph of an indicator with related events and easily identify what’s their impact on the trend. So let’s try it out with our initial question…

(Click the image to see the actual mashup)

Here we compared the CO2 indicator with a list of environmental events from Wikipedia, and then we can see by 1973 the highest peak followed by a noticeable fall, as we noted before. Now we can click on the event on that year, which shows the Iraq oil embargo. There we have it! We were able to find a probable cause of an uncommon change in trends, by using KnoWorld.

This may seem like a rather simple case, but many other out-of-the-box relationships can be made using these visualizations. Besides, KnoWorld supports many other visualizations, like colored maps, displaying flags, bar and line charts, and so on.

What else can I do with KnoWorld?

To show some of the power of KnoWorld and other possibilities, we’ve created some other sample mashups to discover interesting facts about the world.

Ever wondered how wars have impacted the population of France?

And what’s the situation of primary education around the globe?

And who are the countries that import most arms?

Now you can take your conclusions. And these are only 4 from more than 200 indicators that you can access with KnoWorld! To see the full list of indicators, please refer to http://tinyurl.com/gap-ind.

There are thousands of people who could benefit of this project: imagine having a geography class with interactive maps showing indicators about the subject. Or a history class in which we study trends in our country and see how the historical events changed them. Or even an NGO or company could use KnoWorld to help plan their next social actions more efficiently.

That’s awesome! How can I create my own visualizations?

To learn more about KnoWorld and create your own mashups with all the indicators and an infinity of visualization possibilities, please head to our next post, where we’ll show you how through a step-by-step tutorial on KnoWorld and Popfly. If you already know Popfly, just rip one of the mashups to see how it was built.

Please help us!

If you liked one of our mashups, please click the heart icon in the upper right corner on the Popfly page to become a fan of our project.

If you’ve used or want to use our mashups, or if you have questions, ideas or suggestions, please leave a comment in this post (or in the actual mashup in Popfly). We’re eager to see how you’ll use our project to change your own communities.

And finally, please spread the word! We really hope our project can make a good impact in the lives of many people, and with your help this might become a reality!

Thank you!

Virtual Dreams – Mashup team

• Bruno França dos Reis
• Roberto Sonnino
• Eduardo Sonnino