Really good starting premise for a data-driven investigation. Strong data-investigation methods. Wow, you’re using both Google AND Bing API’s. Lots of different languages in use here — Python, AppleScript, etc — this kind of tool-use is exemplary.
How did you determine that a resume was not a “demo how to write a resume” example — did you have to hand-code/filter the 2000 resumes?
>>Yes, with Coverflow, by hand. It was painful (and frankly, only possible in Coverflow) – it took ~1hr for each 1,000 resumes. Fortunately you only have to do it once.
Some engines gave better results (Bing, almost all real resumes) than others (Google, many many fake resume results.) For real-time searches in the future, I’ll only use Bing and the sample resume issue shouldn’t significantly change results. -Sol
This might be good to run on the east-coast zoomed in — in the tri-state area (NY,NJ, CT). Perhaps the overview of the USA is the least-informative view to have.
Also, how about some tools for filtering & querying: people who move to SF, etc.
There’s a Monster API??
>>Now that I poke around, there may not be, and I may have misread something. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to afford to use it without serious grant money or Monster’s cooperation – resume access is $$$. -Sol
Setting the control points for the Bezier curves is open hard problem.
— GL

Yay, Boston! Very beautiful. However, I feel like I’ve seen this type of project before, just expressing different data (like that one piece that drew the united states by marking streets). I think the data is really interesting, although it is hard to interpret it: is there some interactive-ness going on? Maybe you could have some information pop up if you mouseover a certain point (if you haven’t already done that yet). “What’s the deal with this one guy?”, hehe! -Amanda
>>Boston! Woot! Thanks. No interactivity at the moment; that’s why I didn’t bother showing the actual Processing applet. Interactivity is exactly how I’d like to handle the individual graphs issue (maybe even letting people see the original PDFs? Privacy concerns abound.)

I would like there do be a difference between “from” and “to” for each arrow (maybe the line could get thicker as it moves to its destination.) It’s dificult to see where people are flocking to. -MH
>>Definitely, the direction of the lines is crucial. I was struggling with that element of the visualization, both how it would look and how Processing would handle it programmatically. Any advice (especially with applying colored gradients to lines and strokes) is appreciated. Thanks! -Sol

I think the data turned out surprisingly well, in term of the distribution of geographic locations. I think the visuals could use a little polishing (the color of the dots and the connecting lines).

If you could filter by city, and by who is entering/exiting, it would show more clearly where people are traveling. Even filtering by “traveling east” or “traveling south” could be useful. – Jon

The beziers should be drawn differently.–I agree, I think the “arch” effect obscures some of the information. Worse it provides a lot of misleading information – shooting people out into the atlantic.

I think theres a lot of visual potential here that you can tap. The lines if drawn visually (as commented above), this could become a really gorgeous artifact.

I’d really like to see it animated based on dates grabbed from the resumes.
>>My scripts right now are really dumb; I don’t have a good way to affiliate dates with cities regardless of layout used yet. That said, I want to see this too. 🙂 Thanks! -Sol