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Here’s an idea that makes a even the biggest broadband advocate in the world question the role of technology in the world of teens. According to the Washington Post…

The photo-sharing site Instagram has become wildly popular as a way to trade pictures of pets and friends. But a new trend on the site is making parents cringe: beauty pageants, in which thousands of young girls — many appearing no older than 12 or 13 — submit photographs of themselves for others to judge.

As the parent of three girls, I’m more than cringing! Especially since the article continues…

Although users can keep their Instagram accounts private or use pseudonyms, they can expose themselves to the public once they share their photos with others.

The girls in the beauty contests often did not take care to keep their identities and locations private. Some dressed in shirts embroidered with their schools’ names, others provided a link to their Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr accounts containing information about who they are and where they live.

I have full access to my grade-school kids’ Facebook accounts, so I see the pictures that their friends post online. Let’s just say that some seem to forget that old adage – don’t post anything online you wouldn’t want your grandma to see. I can only imagine what’s on the Instagram contests.

A similar tool is SnapChat; I wrote about SnapChat on a different blog. It’s an app that allows you to take a picture and send it to a friend with the idea that it shows up only for a few seconds. I found an interesting article from The DePaulia (school newspaper from DePaul) that talks about why the author uses SnapChat and why she admits it’s “Possibly our generation’s self-destructive addiction.” The author alludes to the very dark side of SnapChat…

Anna Brenoff of The Huffington Post wrote, “Certainly, it is the perfect tool for sexting. You get to show off your privates and there’s no evidence left for extortion later. It also means that your Mom, who is doing her best to police what you do online, doesn’t get to see what you send your friends.”

Although she also seems to dismiss the impact…

Internet privacy is a common topic, and I believe more teens know how to deal with it than in the past. Snapchat is for friends, not enemies.

Unfortunately she seems to have forgotten that for a teen, today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy. And that for teens alliance to your besties may be stronger the deep-roots of teen romance. (Hacks for saving the temporary pictures are not difficult.)

So what’s a concerned grown up to do?

The Washington Post article alludes to recent steps taken at the federal level to improve online security for kids – but they also admit it’s not enough…

In December, federal officials strengthened privacy rules for children. But analysts say regulators are not keeping abreast of new technological trends that present fresh questions about the safety of children on the Internet.

Threat of legal action has also been an effective tactic. I’ve heard of stories in Minnesota involving inappropriate SnapChat pictures have benched a few athletes – both the original SnapChat sender, the recipient quick enough to do a screen save and the recipients of those captured pictures.  And the results were minimized considerably because the original SnapChatter was over 18. According to Mashable, students in New Jersey may be looking at more serious consequences.

Students at one New Jersey high school could face child pornography charges if found in possession of nude photos of classmates.

Explicit images sent via Snapchat prompted a police investigation after two freshman girls shared pictures on the controversial app and later found them posted on Instagram. The Ridgewood High School students sent photos to at least one male classmate who took screenshots in order to save them to a gallery.

In a letter to parents on Wednesday, Superintendent Daniel Fishbein said school officials were working in conjunction with local police to educate the community about “legal and psychosocial implications of this activity.” Fishbein shared the letter with students in sixth through twelfth grade to address the app’s popular use among middle schoolers.

I think the key in the following example is education. Education in the community, with parents and with students. I’m amazed at how many fellow parents are not aware of what their kids are doing online – and fearful of how much I don’t know. (At least I know that nothing makes technology less cool than your mom using it!) For parents and teachers, the roadblock is often keeping up on technology. Common Sense Media is a helpful source to try to keep up on what’s happening and how you can parent to support better use of technology. Earlier today I wrote about TechTECs, an organization that provides training to communities on topics such as online privacy.

Talking about it at the community level helps too. Bringing it up at broadband meetings and PTA events. Finding ways to get adults connected with what’s happening and helping both adults and teens get the tools they need to navigate through digital opportunities. I wouldn’t trade the safety of being offline for the new worlds my kids enjoy online – but I’m interested in mitigating risks.

How do you say, “Oh no they didn’t” in French? Because that’s a pretty good (translated) paraphrase of an interview that Fleur Pellerin, minister of digital economy for the French government, gave Thursday. Pellerin is pretty unhappy with Apple’s decision to remove AppGratis — a company based in Paris — from the App Store.

She called Apple’s decision “brutal” and implied Apple was behaving unethically, according to accounts of her comments. The decision was made “unilaterally and without explanation,” she complained, according to the Financial Times, adding that “this isn’t virtuous and dignified behavior for a company of that scale.”

Apple’s action may be shocking to Pellerin, but removing an app from the App Store is not uncommon, especially for apps that are breaking the rules. Apple found AppGratis in violation of two iOS developer guidelines. In addition, others have reported – and I have also heard — that AppGratis was selling app makers a guarantee that they could get the app into the top 10 app charts on the App Store, which is a no-no. For its part, AppGratis denies breaking any rules.

What Pellerin wants is for Apple to renegotiate with AppGratis. But that’s not really how the App Store operates: Apple has final approval (its actions are always unilateral) and clearly reserves the right to police its App Store. However, Apple doesn’t generally ban apps for life. If AppGratis makes changes to its app so it’s not breaking rules, there’s probably a really good chance the app will be reviewed and accepted back for distribution.

As I wrote yesterday, part of the problem with these kinds of sudden removals is that they come after months or years of violating the rules. Inconsistent guideline enforcement seems to be what Pellerin is really mad about. Because those rules weren’t invoked earlier, AppGratis was able to build a business and collect millions of dollars of investment.

However, if it makes her feel any better, AppGratis is very unlikely to be the last app of its kind to get dismissed from the App Store. The company is very likely beginning a larger crackdown on app discovery apps that only exist to promote other apps.

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Baby, you’re a rich man.

For the 25th consecutive year, Sir Paul McCartney has been named the richest musician in the U.K. on the Sunday Times rich list. The 70-year-old former Beatle is estimated to be the proud owner of a 680 million pound (roughly $1.05 billion) fortune. He shares that fortune with his third wife, Nancy Shevell.

McCartney has topped this rich list for musicians every single year since it began in 1989.

According to Forbes, McCartney racked up $57 million in earnings last year.

McCartney narrowly beat out Andrew Lloyd Webber (£620 million). In the third spot was U2 (as a whole), with an estimated worth of £520 million. Other top finishers on the music rich list (in order) were Sir Elton John, David and Victoria Beckham, Sir Mick Jagger, Michael Flatley, Keith richards, Olivia and Dhani Harrison, and Sting.

The Sunday Times also puts out a Young Music rich list, which was topped by Adele this time (£30 million). She was followed by Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis, Katie Melua, and Florence Welch.

Recently, you may have seen McCartney close the opening ceremony at the 2012 Summer Olympics and perform alongside the surviving members of Nirvana at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief concert. That was seen by approximately 2 billion people worldwide.

Former Kleiner Perkins partner Ellen Pao, who sued the firm for sexual harassment last year and departed the group in October, has announced that she will join Reddit and lead strategic partnerships for the company.

Reddit wrote in a blog post that Pao has already been both a formal and informal advisor to the company for over a year, and has now decided to join full-time. In a statement in the post, Pao explained why she will be joining the social news community:

“I grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, raised by enginerds on Star Wars, computers and books. I live in San Francisco, via New York City, Boston and Hong Kong. I’ve worked with dozens of tech companies, traveling to eleven countries on five continents, to help build a variety of consumer and business platform companies. My favorite subreddits are /r/IAmA and /r/pareidolia (I like people even when they’re not real). Being part of a community of people who care is inspiring and energizing. reddit has so much to offer so many people, and I’m excited to find partners to help make reddit even more awesome.”

Pao left Kleiner Perkins in October after filing a complaint against the firm for gender discrimination. As the Wall Street Journal reported in March, the case is not yet closed, and Kleiner Perkins has hired a prominent lawyer to defend the firm.

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(Reuters) – Buyout firm Apax Partners and Morgan Stanley’s private equity arm are exploring a sale of Chicago-based insurance brokerage Hub International that could be valued at around $2 billion, two people familiar with the matter said this week.

The potential sale of Hub would come six years after Apax and Morgan Stanley Principal Investments took the company private for $1.8 billion, including $145 million of debt.

Representatives for Hub, Apax and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

The private equity owners have yet to launch a sale process for Hub and the considerations are at an early stage, one of the people said, asking not to be named because the matter is not public.

Hub, which provides property and casualty, reinsurance, life and health, as well as employee benefits, has grown through 300 acquisitions of insurance brokerages since its inception in 1998, according to the company’s website.

The firm was originally formed with the merger of 11 privately-held Canadian insurance brokerages in 1998, and today has 250 satellite offices throughout the United States.

Insurance brokers have become attractive takeover targets recently, because they have seen strong revenue growth as a result of raising prices on their offerings to offset big catastrophe losses in 2011.

In November, Canadian private equity firm Onex Corp announced it was buying U.S.-based insurance brokerage USI Holdings from Goldman Sachs Group for $2.3 billion.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The post Apax, Morgan Stanley Look to Sell Hub – Sources appeared first on peHUB.

The LG Optimus F7 was unveiled at Mobile World Congress, and will make its way to Boost Mobile. This new F-series of devices from LG feature mid-range performance and LTE connectivity. There are currently no details on pricing or when the Optimus F7 will arrive on Boost Mobile, but it’s said to be “soon”. Here are the specs:

• 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 HD display (312 ppi)
• 1.5GHz dual-core processor
• 2GB RAM
• 8GB internal storage with microSD card support up to 32GB
• 8-megapixel rear-facing camera
• 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera
• Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean
• 2,540 mAh battery

Source: 9to5Google

Come comment on this article: LG Optimus F7 Heading To Boost Mobile, LTE Onboard

Google users can share access to email and social media from beyond the grave thanks to a new feature that sends out password information if a user has been offline for a long time. The tool comes at a time when people are leaving beyond fewer physical artifacts like letters or photographs for loved ones to remember them by.

The new “Inactive Account Manager” is intended to help users manage their “digital afterlife,” said Google in a blog post on Tuesday. The tool works by instructing Google to email passwords to as many as ten “trusted contacts” in the event that a user has not signed in for three or more months. Alternately, users can tell Google to simply delete the accounts; in either case, users receive a text message before Google takes action.

You can find the tool by going to Settings -> Accounts in your Gmail account or by clicking the link in Google blog. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

For practical purposes, this means that you can ensure loved ones have an easy way to access not just Gmail but other Google services too — like documents in Drive, Blogger accounts, Google voice and Picassa pictures. All of these services are likely to contain information that is of financial or sentimental value to family members.

The Google feature arrives at a time when property and privacy laws have often failed to keep up with the digital age, leading to conflicts between relatives and social media companies. Last year, for instance, parents unsuccessfully sued Facebook to obtain messages of their dead daughter (Facebook refused on the grounds of federal privacy law).

The new Google tool, however, contains a notable omission: it does not allow users to provide access to the music, books and movies contained in Google Play. The reason is that, like Apple’s iTunes, Google Play customers don’t actually own the items they buy. As a Google spokesman explains:

“Digital content purchased on Google Play is licensed to the individual account holder personally. These rights end on the death of the account holder, and there is currently no way of assigning them to others after the user’s death.”

If learn more about the ultimate fate of your digital books and music anyways, see “3 ways to deal with digital media when you die.”

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Content creators don’t need to share the password to their YouTube channel anymore to allow multiple team members to upload videos: The site just enabled a multi-account feature as part of its integration with Google+ that can be used to give up to 50 people admin access to a YouTube channel. Google+ users can also become admins of multiple channels, making it easier to switch between YouTube channels without signing out and in every single time.

Channel owners simply need to connect their YouTube channel to a new or existing Google+ page, and then add their team members as managers to that page. Detailed instructions can be found in YouTube’s help section.

The new feature was enabled as part of a closer integration with Google+, and is currently in a beta test. It also includes other integration features, including a YouTube tab on a linked Google+ page, and easier sharing from YouTube to Google+, and is part of Google’s larger efforts to bring Google+ integration to all of its products.

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The new Stream Data Centers private data center property in Richardson, Texas. The company will build a similar facility in San Antonio.

Stream Data Centers is expanding again, building a greenfield data center on land it has acquired in San Antonio. The company announced today it has acquired 9.6 acres of land in Westover Hills Business Park.  This will be the company’s second data center in San Antonio, and ninth in Texas. Stream Data Centers will break ground on its San Antonio Private Data Center in May 2013 and the facility will be fully commissioned and ready for occupancy in February 2014.

The data center will be a 75,840 square foot purpose-built facility that will initially deliver 2.25 MW of critical load power, with the ability to easily expand the critical load to 6.75 MW with all necessary conduit and pads in place. It is being divided into three private data center suites, each containing  10,000 square feet of raised floor space

“We are excited to build upon our previous success in San Antonio and start our latest project in the area,” said Paul Moser, Co-Managing Partner of Stream Data Centers.  ”San Antonio’s diverse mix of Fortune 1000 companies and their growing IT requirements is driving the need for more data center space in the city.  San Antonio is also attractive to out-of-region enterprise data center users due to its central US location, reliable infrastructure, and stable cost of electricity.” The company has witnessed the strength of the San Antonio market in the past, selling a previous project to a Fortune 100 company.

Stream will utilize its standard 2N electrical / N+1 mechanical configuration and the project will include dual feed power from two separate substations. Additionally, the carrier-neutral facility will include redundant telecommunication rooms serving each PDC Suite with access to the multiple fiber providers serving the site.

It is being constructed using Miami-Dade County Building Code Standards, providing the ability to withstand 146-mph straight-line winds and uplift. Stream is using accredited construction and design practices required to achieve LEED Gold Certification

Stream strategically selected the site for this development in Westover Hills Business Park because it boasts high security and a robust fiber and power infrastructure. The site is in close proximity to other primary enterprise data centers occupied by Microsoft, Chevron, Lowe’s Corporation, Valero, Frost Bank, Christus Health and others.

San Antonio is one of the fastest growing oil & gas markets as a result of its proximity to Houston and attraction from large companies who are creating operational hubs in the city. It is also home to a large concentration of financial services, healthcare, and government related organizations. Microsoft can at least partially be credited for kicking off a strong San Antonio data center market way back in 2008, when it decided to build a mammoth data center there.

“We look forward once again to working with Stream Data Centers in San Antonio to identify and recruit enterprise data center users to the area,” said Mario Hernandez, president of San Antonio Economic Development Foundation.

Stream has other data center developments in Dallas, Houston, Denver and Minneapolis. Stream Data Centers has a fourteen year track record of providing space for enterprise data center users including Apple, AT&T, The Home Depot, Chevron, Catholic Health Initiatives, Nokia and others.  During that time, Stream has acquired, developed and operated more than 1.5 million square feet of data center space in Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, and California representing more than 125 megawatts of power.

Google recently held a Google+ hangout sharing tips for improving the user experience on your site, which it uploaded to its AdSense YouTube channel. This week, Google shared the video on the AdSense blog bringing it to our attention.

The video discusses how to better understand your users, increase engagement, and measure the success of changes you make.

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the network industry:

Zayo selected by Hurricane Electric for 100G backbone.  Zayo Group announced that Hurricane Electric Internet Services has purchased 100G wavelength services on Zayo’s newly installed 100G routes. The upgraded routes include New York to Washington, D.C. and Chicago to Memphis. Hurricane Electric is connected to 60 major exchange points and exchanges traffic directly with more than 2,700 different networks, and the 100G routes will help create greater per Gigabit cost efficiencies relative to prior service deployments. “Installation of our newly implemented 100G Wave system along major U.S. routes allows Zayo to leverage the latest generation technology to meet the capacity demands of customers like Hurricane Electric,” says Zach Nebergall, Vice President of Waves Product Group at Zayo. “This service delivers increased capacity and cost efficiency, as well as improved latency through the latest technology.”

Ciena selected by XO for video transport solution.  Ciena (CIEN) announced that XO Communications will use Ciena’s Digital Video Transport solution to deliver native digital video transport services to media and entertainment customers across the XO nationwide network. With XO Communications’ coast-to-coast 100G network, the Ciena solution will allow XO to cost-effectively transport high-definition video content for its customers without affecting original quality. The solution  includes the 565 Advanced Services Platform, a compact and cost-optimized metro WDM platform that enables a variety of data, storage and video services to be cost-efficiently aggregated onto an optical wavelength-based network or service.The Digital Video Transport solution will be deployed in conjunction with other Ciena platforms in the XO network. “In the media and entertainment industry, uptime, video quality, and secure, high-speed service delivery are critical,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, senior vice president, Global Products group at Ciena. “Ciena’s highly reliable, scalable and flexible optical platforms, part of our OPN programmable network architecture, address the specific requirements of native digital video transport. We’re pleased to help XO Communications deliver a secure and reliable solution so that they can quickly and cost-effectively send bandwidth-intensive, high quality video between geographically dispersed teams.”

Alcatel-Lucent and Shaw trial 400G.  Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and Canadian operator Shaw Communications have achieved a milestone with the successful first field trial in North America of 400 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) data transmission over an existing optical link carrying live network traffic. The trial ran over a 400 kilometre route between Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, using Shaw’s current high-capacity transport network, designed for speeds up to 100 Gbps. Using Alcatel-Lucent’s 400 Gbps technology, the trial demonstrated the ability of an existing optical network carrying up to 17.6 Terabits-per-second (Tbps). “With the growing appetite for services and the proliferation over many different devices, including tablets and connected devices, we were looking for next-generation technologies to help us build a world-leading infrastructure capable of keeping up with broadband demands,” said Peter Bissonnette, President, Shaw Communications Inc. ”Alcatel-Lucent’s 400 Gbps technology enables us to continue our leadership within the telecommunications industry and reinforce our commitment to maintaining leading-edge high-speed Internet capability.”

Just a day after Netflix told investors that they would regularly use their various social media accounts to disclose material information, even mentioning CEO Reed Hasting’s Facebook account specifically, Hastings has done just that.

In a Facebook post, Hastings announced that Netflix users have streamed 4 billion hour in the past 3 months. Of course, he would probably argue that this type of tidbit isn’t really material information anyway – but it’s nearly identical to the post that got him in trouble with the SEC last December.

Hastings posted that Netflix users were now streaming 1 billion hours of content per month, and that ruffled the SEC’s feathers. They claimed that it violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, as the bit of info didn’t come in an official filing or press release. Hastings hit back, saying that 1.) it wasn’t really material and 2.) Facebook does count as a network for disclosure.

The SEC eventually cleared Hastings of all wrongdoing in the incident, and updated their rules to allow for social media as a dispersion channel for investor info – so long as the company alerts investors beforehand that they will be using the social media channels.

And on Wednesday, Netflix revealed that they would be doing just that in a regulatory filing.

“The information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information…In light of the SEC’s guidance, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our company to review the information we post on the U.S. social media,” said Netflix.

It looks like this is the future of social media disclosure. Here’s Netflix CEO Reed Hastings informing his 264,000 followers on Facebook that Netflix users have streamed over 4 billion hours of content in the last three months. It turns out to be only part of a post that references House of Cards and the upcoming Hemlock Grove. Oh, and it’s not even a status update, really. It’s additional comment on a link that he posted.

Reed Hastings1 hour ago

House of Cards fav quote: “look at the bigger picture.” Over the last three months, you all watched over 4 billion hours on Netflix. Next up, some real monsters from Eli Roth…

Netflix series Hemlock Grove: 'People want their horror horrific,' says Eli Roth

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Families that own a game console tend to keep it as a central part of the living room experience. They watch Netflix, Hulu and other digital programming all through the console. There’s always been one aspect of the living room entertainment ecosystem that game consoles have yet to crack though – the TV.

The Verge reports that the next Xbox is being built as the centerpiece of the living room. In other words, Microsoft’s next console will take over your TV and set-top box to bring the Xbox experience to every part of your entertainment center. The rumored move to take over the TV is only the natural evolution as Microsoft has been turning the Xbox 360 into more and more of an entertainment machine, instead of a game console, over the past few years.

To accomplish its goal of taking over the living room, Microsoft is reportedly changing the next Xbox hardware in some significant ways. The first is an HDMI-in that will have users routing their set-top box through the console. Doing so will overlay a Xbox-style UI on all television and film content to keep users firmly planted in the Xbox experience.

As for Kinect, the company will be reportedly using its Orwellian tech to watch people as they watch TV. It will watch the eye movement of the person to automatically pause a TV show or movie when they look away. Samsung will be using a similar technology in the Galaxy S 4.

Those wanting the Xbox TV experience without the console, Microsoft is also rumored to be making an Xbox TV set top box. There’s not many details about the hardware just yet, but it seems like it will be the Microsoft equivalent of an Apple TV or Roku player. It’s rumored that the Xbox TV will launch next year – after the next Xbox’ launch later this year.

Microsoft can’t afford to let all these rumors, especially the controversial ones, run rampant for much longer. The company is rumored to be holding an Xbox reveal event on May 21, but that’s not been confirmed yet. It would probably be in Microsoft’s best interest to announce the console sooner than later to take control of the narrative that’s getting out of control thanks to these rumors.

Cisco (CSCO) announced a range of new joint technologies and integrated solutions targeting data centers that use Microsoft’s Cloud OS technologies. With those customers in mind the two companies are combining the Cisco Unified Data Center architecture with Microsoft Fast Track architecture solutions.

Microsoft Fast Track 3.0 solutions simplify the management of combined Cisco and Microsoft data centers by giving Microsoft customers programmatic access to the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS).  Both Cisco and EMC and Cisco and NetApp reference architectures have been validated for the Microsoft Fast Track 3.0 program. The Cisco Nexus 1000V series virtual and cloud networking platform, combined with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Extensible Switch and System Center Virtual Machine Manager allow customers who wish to virtualize certain aspects of their data center networks can do so alongside physical networking and cloud computing infrastructure. The Cisco UCS UI Extension Add-in for System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager provides centralized management of Cisco UCS by allowing access to Cisco UCS management controls from within System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

“Microsoft’s Cloud OS approach, based on Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, gives customers a comprehensive platform for implementing their infrastructure on premises, with a hosting service provider, and in the cloud,” said Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Windows Server and System Center at Microsoft. ”Combining the proven Microsoft Fast Track architecture with Cisco’s innovative Unified Data Center architecture provides partners and customers with a first-class option for navigating their way through today’s new age of data center deployment and management.”

Cisco and Microsoft intend to roll out targeted channel initiatives in select countries to enable alignment in selling Microsoft Fast Track 3.0 architecture solutions.

“Cisco and Microsoft are focused on helping customers realize a new business vision for the cloud era, and Scalability Experts has become a key leader in advancing this vision by leveraging scalable and high-performance platforms,” said Raj Gill, founder and chief technology officer, Scalability Experts. ”Increasing the performance of database operations, lowering IT costs and improving business decision-making capabilities is what we focus on delivering to each of our clients.  Microsoft solutions and Cisco’s UCS compute family are key strategic platforms for enabling us to consistently exceed our customer’s expectations.”

Today, the Guggenheim Foundation revealed its new class of Fellows. Three thousand applied and, in the end, 175 scholars, artists, scientists, writers and thinkers were selected — not just based on their accomplishments to date, but for their potential as well. We were pleased to see three TED speakers among this esteemed group:

Journalist Joshua Foer, who wowed us at TED2012 with his simple techniques for memorizing extremely long lists of numbers and words, has been named a 2013 Fellow in Creative Arts. Watch his talk, “Feats of memory anyone can do” »

Stuart Firestein, the chair of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, opened his TED2013 talk with a puzzling proverb: “It’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat.” Named a 2013 Fellow in Natural Sciences, read all about his talk in celebration of ignorance »

Jessica Green, also a 2013 Fellow in the Natural Sciences, gave an exciting talk at TED2013 about what can happen when microbiologists and architects work together. Watch her latest talk, “We’re covered in germs. Let’s design for that.” »

Visualization is easy, right? After all, it’s just some colorful shapes and a few text labels. But things are more complex than they seem, largely due to the the ways we see and digest charts, graphs, and other data-driven images. While scientifically-backed studies do exist, there are actually many things we don’t know about how and why visualization works. To help you make better decisions when visualizing your data, here’s a brief tour of the research.

The Early Years of Understanding Data
While the early days of visualization go back over 200 years, actual research to understand how it works really only started in the 1960s. Jacques Bertin’s Sémiologie Graphique (Semiology of Graphics), published in 1969, was the first systematic treatment of the different ways graphical representations encode data. Bertin coined many terms of the trade, such as the mark, which is the basic unit of every visualization, like a bar, line, or circle sector. He also defined a number of retinal variables, which are the visual properties we use to express the data; these include color, size, location, etc.

In the early 1980s, Bertin’s work was picked up by researchers in statistical graphics and the nascent field of visualization (which didn’t quite have its name yet). William Cleveland and Robert McGill performed experiments to find out which of Bertin’s retinal variables were best suited for particular types of data, while Jock Mackinlay built a system that put Bertin’s and their work to use to create visualizations from data.

Thanks to Cleveland and McGill, we know that our perception is the most precise when it comes to understanding the location of a mark, followed closely by our ability to perceive length. We’re even less adept at perceiving area and orientation, and our ability to distinguish colors is even worse. We can see tiny differences in direction between lines that are almost but not exactly parallel, but we have a hard time quantifying an angle to say how many percent it represents in a pie chart. We can tell fewer than a dozen colors apart when their hues are very distinct, and can precisely compare shades of colors next to each other; but move them apart and surround them with very different ones, and it all goes out the window.

This may all seem interesting, but its practical uses are not obvious. To turn the theory into practice, Mackinlay built a system that assigned data fields to visual variables automatically in a way that optimized readability. Most visualization tools today still don’t offer that kind of intelligence, though Tableau’s Show Me! feature is built on a very similar idea.

More Knowledge, More Questions
A lot has happened since the 1980s, but there seems to be a bit of a standstill when it comes to understanding the basics. There are many open questions today, and we also realize the gaps and problems with some of the work performed.

As a case in point, Cleveland promoted an idea that he called banking to 45 degrees. The idea is simple: in a line chart, the average slope should be 45 degrees. That makes intuitive sense, since very steep charts tend to look overly dramatic and very flat ones make it hard to see any change in the data at all. Cleveland’s recommendation was based on research on how well we are able to compare the slopes of lines. He found that the highest accuracy was achieved when the lines being compared had an average of 45 degrees inclination.

But it turns out that that is not the entire truth. There were some limitations in Cleveland’s study that made 45 degrees look like the best option, but it seems that shallower angles are actually better. This was shown in a research paper that Justin Talbot, John Gerth, and Pat Hanrahan published in October 2012 at the annual VisWeek conference. The left line graph below is closer to 45 degrees on average, but the right one, while shallower, has fewer areas that produce large errors (which are indicated by the dark red color).

There is more. My former student Caroline Ziemkiewicz and I found that there is a potential interaction between the visual metaphor used to show data and the linguistic metaphor used to ask a question. We found this when looking at visualizations of trees, or hierarchies. The two most popular visualization techniques for this type of data, treemaps and node-link diagrams, differ in the way they show the hierarchy. Node-link diagrams use levels (or “above-ness”), while treemaps use nesting. A question asked using a levels metaphor (“Which of the nodes below node D …”) is easier to answer using the node-link diagram, which uses a compatible metaphor, than one asked using containment (“Which of the directories inside directory D…”), which works better with treemaps. The different metaphors are illustrated below, with treemaps on the left and node-link diagrams on the right.

We only scratched the surface on this, there are many other metaphors that are used in visualization, whether obvious or not. Barbara Tversky and Jeff Zacks found in the early 2000s that lines imply transitions whereas bars imply individual values. The seemingly simple choice between a bar and a line chart has implications on how we perceive the data.

Bizarrely, so does gravity. In our work on metaphors, Ziemkiewicz and I found that people interpreted round shapes as unstable because, they said, they might roll away. But to roll, there must be a force that causes the movement. After studying this effect some more, we found that the points in a scatterplot attract each other, and that they are seemingly pulled down by gravity. We remember points not where they are in the plot, but shift them towards clusters in our memory, and let them drift slightly downwards.

Findings and distinctions in visualization can be subtle, but they can have a profound impact on how well we can read the information and how we interpret it. There is much more to be learned about how visualization works and how best we can represent, analyze, and communicate data.

Visualizing Data
An HBR Insight Center

• Tell Better Data Stories with Motion and Interactivity
• Visualizing Hip-Hop Lyrics as Cultural Indicator
• When Creating Visualizations, Question Everything
• Telling Stories with Visual Data: A Glimpse into the Future of Narrative