Data

Vancouver is thinking open. A council meeting agenda calls for discussing "open data, open standards and open source software for all of its data and information resources," according to the ReadWriteWeb post linked above. The benefits of governments going open are immense and arguably fulfill the role of government in serving its people. Indeed, Open Source is, by its very nature, a form of digital democracy.

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I recently had the opportunity to take Edward Tufte's one day course, Presenting Data and Information. Tufte is the master of the subject, and everything I've heard about his course was positive, I can now concur and recommend that anyone interested in data visualization and usability should take this course of you have the chance, it's really quite affordable and you get a set of his books with registration.

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I like many others was completely blown away by Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest. The last 3rd of the book is a compendium of non profit and non governmental organizations around the world that are working on social justice, human rights, sustainability, environmental and indigenous people's issues as well as many others. Hawken's describes these groups collectively as a movement, the largest movement in the history of the world. A movement that is decentralized and global.

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I had a page open from NPR in another window and forgot to mention in my previous post, but NPR also has an API as part of their Open Content Strategy. In keeping with NPR's mission of "a more informed public" allowing public access to content and allowing developers to mash up and revolutionize how people consume NPR content.

A recent study on social networking came to my attention yesterday and it sparked a discussing with Bevan that we vowed to continue on the blog. The study which surveyed 13,000 adults between 18 and 65 in 17 developed nations found that 58% did not know what social networking is (30% in the US).

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Google is announcing Friend Connect tonight, a service advertised to "help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors." Friend Connect employs OpenID and oAuth which is a good start, but how it puts them together is lacking vision and, disturbingly, may raise significant privacy concerns.

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I just found the following interesting facts compiled by Women Who Tech, which incidentally is hosting a Tele-Summit on Women in Technology on March 31st, 2008.

Top 5 Cities Where Women Work in IT

• Washington, DC Metro area - women account for 32.3% of the IT workforce.
• Detroit - women account for 31.5% of the IT workforce.
• Baltimore - women account for 28.6% of the IT workforce.
• Philadelphia - women account for 28.2% of the IT workforce.
• Atlanta - women account for 28.2% of the IT workforce.
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What was AT&T's vision of the Internet? Movies on demand? Bridges without stopping to pay toll? What about he CRAZY stuff, like: Meeting without your shoes on?! Faxing from the beach? Tucking your baby in from a phone booth? Who the hell knows what a phone booth is?

Alex Iskold has written a fantastic piece on The Road to the Semantic Web "Some people think that the Semantic Web is about AI, some claim that it is more about semantics, while others say that it is about data annotation. All agree however, that we will all be wonderfully more productive and simply happier when it arrives." What is the Semantic Web?

Zephyr Teachout has a great op-ed in the Washington Post today about the future of campaigning. She talks about some interesting ideas like mobile political affinity software, political accountability software and political placement as ways of reaching voters in '08. Thanks to the Berkman Center newsletter for pointing this one out.