saigal

here's a link directly to getting started

https://dataherald.com/get-started

Good feedback, Dan. To be honest we are in price discovery mode and are most eager to get users on the platform to understand use cases.

few other things that users typically want that standard data viz tools don't make easy -- auto-updating data pipelines so that your data viz is never stale, and notifications when the data updates. Not exhaustive by any means, but just some more color.

Anuj here. My co-founder Amir (Aazo11) and I are building Dataherald (https://dataherald.com/). After our initial HN launch (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26194440) last year, Dataherald is now used by ~100 news outlets nationwide. We are now opening up the product to anyone who wants to tell a story or conduct analysis that leverages data, with a Free Trial (https://dataherald.com/get-started) for the HN community.

Our software makes it easy for anyone to find cleaned, ready-to-use data, and then create auto-updating visualizations from it. All in under 60 seconds. No code required. We’re similar to your favorite data visualization tool (Tableau, Datawrapper, etc) if it already came with the data attached.

I’m a non-technical founder, without a CS background. Over the last several years whenever I’ve wanted to use data to tell a story or conduct analysis that leverages data, I’ve had to rely on a data engineer to create data pipelines to my most heavily used data sources (in my case, Bureau of Labor Statistics). I always think that the data is going to be easy to access and update, but it never is. I’m constantly spending all my time getting the data in a usable format rather than actually doing any analysis. For a public dataset like BLS, haven't a bunch of people already done this? Why can't I just search and find it in normal human language? As an example, I was doing research on the potential employment impact of autonomous trucks on truck drivers (number of jobs lost etc.) and gave up while trying to decipher which BLS series ID I should be pulling.

I’m not the only one. Journalists, for example, feel this pain whenever covering data-heavy topics like the coronavirus, the economy, and especially with data sources that update frequently like real estate prices. The problem is getting larger. There’s an increasing amount of data in the world but most people can't use it to tell a story or make a decision. They lack the ability to build and maintain data pipelines.

With Dataherald (https://dataherald.com/), we’ve developed our own data pipeline engine that can be easily configured to extract data from online sources continually feeding data from public sources and private partners into our data warehouses. We create configurable templates (called Datafeeds) which users can select a few parameters for, and then have an auto-updating visualization. For example "Median home price change" (https://embed.dataherald.com/v3/viz/61b1132960a58f47321bcbc7) is a Datafeed, and the user can select the city and state. We are creating the Datafeeds and setting up the pipelines ourselves for now, but will be opening this up and looking for beta users.

Dataherald streamlines data workflows, establishing a real-time data pipeline connection for users to the data sources they need to run their businesses or tell a story. Non-technical users are more autonomous and are able to diminish their dependency on other teams.

Whether you are a marketer, a researcher, or a journalist, Dataherald helps you tell stories with data faster. We’ve created a Free Trial (https://dataherald.com/get-started) for the HN community, valid for sign ups before Christmas (Dec 25).

One question that we always get that I will clarify now is that Dataherald specializes in helping you harness the power of data that is EXTERNAL to your organization, as opposed to your internal operational data. We’d love your feedback and suggestions.

Best, Anuj

I had one more question... Can you tell me just a bit more about your use case as a marketer? We've received a lot of similar requests and I'm trying learn more about the use cases. Thank you in advance.

In addition, because each of our data viz is connected to live data feeds, it creates an ever-expanding library with decreasing effort/time from HiGeorge. More content, more revenue, less time/effort as time goes on.

It's true. The one-off data viz often get the most engagement. For marketing purposes, this is fantastic. As a company, however, our product is more "sticky" the more often the underlying datasets update since the content would always be fresh. I like to say it's kind of like a Netflix movie except you don't mind watching it again and again :-)

"Favorite" is probably the wrong word but the most 'insightful' data viz could be the one that shows the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on different racial groups. Here's an example for San Francisco. https://missionlocal.org/2021/02/2-19-tracker/

Good recommendation. May I ask what is the use case -- blog post, academic journal, news article? If you send us the url to where the data is, we can certainly take a look. pls feel free to email me at anuj@hi-george.com

Similar to what I mentioned in another reply, for now we offer a limited set of data visualizations that are self-serve and entirely free here: https://hi-george.com/selfserve

if there is a data set that we don't cover, please feel free to request it and we will get back to you asap.

I like this idea a lot. For now we offer a limited set of data visualizations that are self-serve and entirely free here: https://hi-george.com/selfserve

Requests for other data sets are welcome

Ah, I love this. While we are starting with news publishers, we are HIGHLY aware that others (marketers, bloggers, press teams at enterprises, and many more) are interested in storytelling that is supplemented with data. Another great example are Substack writers. We are exploring individual plans. May I ask what you would be willing to pay as an individual?

In these early days we perhaps spend more time thinking about this question than any other. After speaking with hundreds of news publishers, the truth seems to be that certain topic areas have "staying power" while others are more fleeting. For example, rental price trends, real estate trends, economic data (e.g. unemployment rates), environmental issues (e.g. air quality)are always relevant. The other nuance is that these topics have constantly updating data feeds since the the realities of the world are constantly changing. Kind of like the Pareto principle.

We should have what you need. Feel free to email me at anuj [at] hi-george.com

Also you can browse our library at https://hi-george.com/visualizations

hahaha

It is true that some newsrooms have a point of view that they push. While data can be manipulated, the desire is that data visualizations from reputable sources (e.g. CDC, etc) can help separate fact from fiction.

Pricing begins at $199/month for small publishers, increasing for publishers that have larger size/scope. Your feedback regarding availability of pricing on the website is noted and I can understand the friction caused by needing to speak with sales. It is a change that we are currently weighing.

Every data visualization that HiGeorge publishes is reproducible using the Associated Press data guidelines (Link below, note that acct creation may be required). This means that anyone (journalist, editor, even the reader) can easily verify that the data is accurate and can assess for themselves whether the data source is reputable.

Each of our data visualizations is connected to a data feed so that it is always up to date. They are of the "set if and forget it" variety.

https://www.apstylebook.com/ap_stylebook?az_chapter=80&other...

Pricing depends on the size of publisher/newsrooms; it starts at $199/month for access to our data viz library. For individual newsletter writers and bloggers, we are experimenting with plans that are less.

PE firms and hedge funds that buy papers want to maintain quality journalism in a cost-efficient manner. HiGeorge does exactly this. It enables newsrooms to have geographic coverage while maintaining low overhead. Because the ROI on interactive data content is high (increased time spent on page, increase in pageviews etc) buyers of papers look very favorably on a solution such as HiGeorge.

We can ingest any public datasets. USAFacts is fantastic and would be a fabulous partner for us!