Machine learning service BigML and open data service Quandl are collaborating to make it easy to build predictive models around economic data. More importantly, though, is how easy Quandl makes it to find and use data. Read more »
Nearly one year into his tenure as Chief Technology Office for the Department of Health and Human Services, Bryan Sivak chats about how open data can transform health care and why entrepreneurs should care. Read more »
The financial technology firm will use the funding to push on into Europe, which – by happy coincidence – has just decided to adopt governmental open data policies across the board. Read more »
Good news for startups hoping to draw on public road traffic and weather data, among other types: changes agreed on Wednesday should allow the use of such data for free or at very low cost. Read more »
MapR is releasing open source code and partnering with Canonical on Ubuntu, while Netflix is releasing some data for for developers to play with. Sounds like a good day for openness. Read more »
Government agencies will never be as nimble as a Silicon Valley startup, but, at SXSW, Bryan Sivak, CTO of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, describes how the tech world is influencing his agency. Read more »
New York-based Schoology is challenging Student Information Systems to create APIs to streamline the open exchange of data in education. Read more »
A New York newspaper has come under fire for publishing a map with the addresses of registered gun owners — data that is legally public, but not often published. The incident raises a number of thorny questions about what personal information should be made public and when. Read more »
By accessing and combining publicly-available datasets, health innovators are letting patients and others view connections between physicians. The so-called “DocGraph,” as one hacktivist calls it, could give patients a valuable window into who their doctors trust. Read more »
Germany’s state-owned rail company has threatened a developer with legal action for publishing its timetables and station coordinates – data it’s handed over to Google in an exclusive deal. The developer says he’s just trying to keep the public informed. Read more »
Moves to allow the digitization of ‘orphan works’ and free up the metadata around 20 million cultural objects will benefit the public and could inspire a new wave of apps and web services. But the underlying motivation is fundamentally political. Read more »
As more “open data” comes online, finding the right data, managing its access and workflow, and fostering collaboration, is the problem startup Junar wants to attack with its new Open Data Platform. Customers can try it out for free, starting now. Read more »
According to some researchers, web companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook are doing the research world a disservice because they won’t make their datasets available for peer review. These researchers have a point, but privacy concerns might always trump openness where openness matters at all. Read more »
Five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. Key players like IT companies, telcos and utilities must learn how to harness those technologies, and quickly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
New York City kicked off voting on Thursday on its third annual BigApps competition, which rewards apps that use its open data sets. But one of the most popular resources appears to be Foursquare, which is in use in more than half of the top apps. Read more »
The British government is gambling on the idea that greater access to public data will encourage economic growth — and resurrecting a plan it had previously killed to build a world-leading open data research center. Read more »
New York City’s new Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne said New York City is trying to turn the city’s government into a platform that enables developers and individuals to take data about life in the metropolis and use it to create apps, services and other resources. Read more »
Factual, an open data start-up built by Applied Semantics co-founder Gil Elbaz, has raised $25 million in first-round funding to expand its data API service. The company is trying to build a platform for open data that developers can tap to power their applications. Read more »
Open source is losing relevance as a standalone business strategy, but makes a great deal of sense as part of a larger strategy built on open data, open APIs, and more. Those still fixated on licensing are missing the point, not to mention big revenue opportunities. Read more »
Today’s recommended reading links include a fascinating look at a ghost town in the California desert, an analysis of why more free parking would be bad for cities, an inspiring story about how open data helped Alzheimer’s research and a graveyard for computers in Ghana. Read more »
