Online Data Visualization: Tableau Public Released Today
A special thank you goes to Elissa Fink of Tableau for providing me with a demo of Tableau Public. With being a big fan of Tableau desktop, it should be no surprise that Tableau Public impressed me for many of the same reasons I like the desktop version.
Today is the official release of Tableau Public and the latest version of Tableau Desktop 5.1. Below you will find some quotes from today’s press release:
SEATTLE, WA, February 11, 2010 – Tableau Software today launched a new product that brings public data to life on the web. Tableau Public, available for free, lets anyone who posts content to the web easily create interactive visualizations and publish them to blogs, web sites, Twitter feeds or anywhere online. Instead of viewing static charts or tables, Tableau Public lets people answer questions and share data interactively on the web.
Current alternatives for sharing data online are clumsy. Typically, data is pasted into tables and lists, or posted as files or catalogs that are difficult to use. Available at Tableaupublic.com, Tableau Public is helping to solve this challenge – bringing data to life on the web for ordinary people. With its interactive visualizations and dashboards, Tableau Public helps people start conversations based on data that is useful, beautiful and shareable. No special plug-ins are required, all that’s needed to see and use the data is a web browser.
In conjunction with the general availability of Tableau Public, the company is also releasing today Version 5.1 of its Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server product suite. Version 5.1 provides more analytic richness, better publishing, and increased scalability and performance. Analytical features include reference bands that provide context to a user’s analysis, bullet charts to evaluate related data, and intelligent data labels to call out the most critical data. New publishing features include rich formatting, streamlined toolbar design, more filter options, and a flexible layout.
I have yet to try out the newest version, 5.1, but I did see that it will have the ability to produce Stephen Few’s famous Bullet Charts without any tricky workarounds. I can tell you that I’m excited to start using version 5.1.
Below is a screen shot from Tableau Public.
Next, you can see a screenshot from The Seattle Bubble where Tableau Public was used to create an interactive data visualization on their website.
Finally, the last screenshot shows a line graph created with Tableau Public.
There are a bunch of options and functionality that impressed me with this software. Some of them that stand out are: low chart junk visualizations, stunning charts and graphs, interactivity of the data visualization once published online and finally, the ease at which the visuals can be shared and socialized online. Sharing a chart or graph is as easy as sharing a YouTube video.
Tableau has some limitations that they set on the size and transfer of data using Tableau Public. The current version maxes out at 100,000 rows of data and the ability to publish up to 50 megabytes online. Those numbers don’t appear to be Google-like, but they probably don’t want this version used for commercial purposes, which I understand. Also, any data visualizations that you create and publish to the web will not be private, they are public. Did I mention the software is free?
Honestly, one of the questions I was going to ask Elissa during the demo was, “Do you know about other similar resources on the web that allowed for data uploads and online data visualizations (Many Eyes, Verifiable, Protovis) and if so how is this different?” Seriously, after a few minutes of seeing the functionality and aesthetics, it was clear there is little comparison. See for yourself and I look forward to sharing visualizations!
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