Mashalist

Gotta Love Craig

Craig Newmark is great. Here’s one reason why, another and another (Part I & II).

West-Coast Mashup

Wow, look at all the people at Mashup Camp. And it’s not just hipsters from startups – lots of folks from IBM, Intel and other ... institutions.

I wasn’t able to make it, but after scanning the registration list on the wiki, I’m surprised by one thing: East-Coast media is way under-represented.

There are people from Washingtonpost.com and Salon.com, but unless other folks haven’t listed their affiliation on the wiki, that’s about it. I don’t see anybody from NYTD, Viacom, NBC/Universal, Reed or Hearst. The companies they spend all their time worrying about – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, IAC – are out in force.

Reigning In Freedom of Information Requests?

From last Wednesday's USA Today (via IRE):

The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of sensitive data available to the press and public through freedom-of-information requests ...

Jeffrey Addicott, a professor at the law school, said he will use that research to produce a national "model statute" that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that potentially dangerous information "stays out of the hands of the bad guys."

"There's the public's right to know, but how much?" said Addicott, a former legal adviser in the Army's Special Forces.

"There's a strong feeling that the law needs to balance that with the need to protect the well-being of the nation. ... There's too much stuff that's easy to get that shouldn't be," he said.

Where’s Our Data-Driven Government?

Here’s a good one: Greenwich, Conn. First Selectman Jim Lash is facing fines from the state’s Freedom of Information Commission for allegedly withholding town GIS data (via All Points Blog).

Lash originally argued that disclosing the data would be a security risk, but the Commission disagreed with him and ordered him to turn over the data. Now he’s dragging his feet. 

This guy is like a librarian who thinks his job is to protect the books. Of course you need to deal with security and privacy issues, but the attitude is completely wrong. Local public officials should be in the business of providing their community with as much data as possible.

Actually, I think open, well-structured data is one of the most important things a town leader can do for his or her community.

As community dialogues move online to places like Coastsider, Baristanet and H2otown, it’s becoming easier to incorporate data into the discussion. This elevates the discussion and makes action easier. We know that because it’s exactly what’s happening at today’s most open, data-driven companies. So, how about data-driven government?

Mapping Farm Aid

Washingtonpost.com is running a great map comparing agricultural funding levels in counties across the U.S. (Via Derek). In each county the map lists the top recipients in 2005 as well as the amount they received. That means you can find all sorts of outrageous gems like Dublin Farms in Corcoran, CA, which got paid $1,828,994 by the federal government last year.

The Post map is not built on one of the big mapping APIs. I imagine that’s because the APIs from Google, Yahoo! and MSN are designed for mapping points, not areas. It is possible to use the APIs to map areas (here’s one example), but for most it’s not practical.

Since the GYM troika is developing their APIs with a singular focus on local advertising, and area mapping doesn't seem useful for local businesses, I doubt we’ll we see area mapping added to any of the APIs any time soon.

Of course, it would be great if I was wrong. As much as I like the Post map, it seems a little clunky. I want to zoom in and see exactly what this Dublin Farms outfit is doing with all its cash …

Mapstraction

From www.mapstraction.com:

Mapstraction is a library which provides a common API for Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's javascript mapping APIs to enable switching from one to another as smoothly as possible. The aim of Mapstraction is mainly to protect companies building commercial products on top of Google Maps from changes to terms and conditions, the introduction of ads, or the emergence of a competing library with better maps, different imagery or preferable licensing terms. (Via Gabor)

Seems like a good thing ...

Google Sorts Out Its Terms

Looks like Google has sorted out the confusion between its enterprise mapping documentation and its mapping API terms. (I wrote about this on Monday.)

Today they posted:

... the Google Maps API continues to be totally open for free, publicly accessible sites, both non-profit & commercial.

So, open news sites can keep on mappin'.

UPDATE: Interesting that the story is very different  for Google Earth.

Terms of Confusion

Wow. Big day in the world of mapping APIs. 

First this from Google, then this from Yahoo. 

Most of the news is good (the fact that Google is releasing a geocoder is great).

Google's new enterprise mapping product seems cool, but I’m confused about the terms. 

On one hand, the Mapping API terms do not include a “commercial” restriction.  The only related restriction is that “the Service may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge.”

On the other hand, the Enterprise Q&A states that “The Google Maps API license does not permit using the API for commercial applications.”

“Commercial” is a much broader restriction than only “services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge.” A lot of commercial sites -- including most news sites -- offer free access to consumers.

So which is it? Does the new Q&A mean news sites have to shell out $10,000 to use Google Maps, or does the $10K only apply if they put the maps behind a paid wall?

Ibiseye

The folks at HeraldTribune.com in Southwest Florida have put together a very cool hurricane tracking page (via Cyberjournalist.net).  Remember it the next time a storm comes rolling through ...

Data That Resonates

Adrian has lots of important stuff to say in this interview.

For example:

Much of the information that journalists collect, day to day, is structured. Information such as crime reports, obituaries and event listings always follow a certain pattern, which can be richly exploited by databases.

The majority of newspapers take the time to *collect* this information -- which is the hard part -- but they dramatically reduce its value by NOT storing it in structured formats. Instead, they distill it into big blobs of text for publication in their print editions, and then they shovel those big blobs of text onto their websites. At this point, all structure is lost: Crime reports can't be sorted or searched intelligently, and event listings can't be viewed in any sort of user-friendly way.

The very act of distilling information into a news story -- which is essentially a big blob of text -- removes any sort of structure. Information is exponentially more valuable if it's structured.

He’s absolutely right. Newspapers take structured data and feed it to people in an unstructured format.

He could have also pointed out that after distilling data into structureless blobs, they often try to re-apply structure to articles by adding all sorts of descriptive metadata. That can be a messy process.

Adrian says papers can produce more valuable information by retaining the structure of the data they publish, i.e. by publishing databases.

I agree, but as we build these databases, we need to remember what those big blobs of text do well: they tell stories.

We need to publish all the data we have – get it out there so that readers can find the things that are important to them. (How many murders were there on MY block?)

But at the same time, we need to organize and filter the data in a ways that resonate with readers – in ways that jump out of Blackberries and seems bigger than single blocks.