The US government recently released a lot of statistical data in developer friendly format over at Data.gov . And almost instantly we have Sun Microsystems and biggies such as O Reilly media having a competition for the best apps that use the information from Data.gov .It’s called Apps for America and its the second time its being held, but this time the main focus is to use the data released by the government.
The winner (which was recently announced) is an app called Datamasher.org. According to the Reuter’s report:
Mashups are displayed on a state-by-state map or in a table format, which enables users to examine state markers and make quick comparisons between states.
I just had a look at Data.gov and I am really thrilled at the prospect of such a resource. Its such a pain going through the government records (atleast in my country). I was recently trying to find some information about the Sarvashiksha Abhiyan (SSA) expenditure and funds allocated to Jhunjhunu district and it took so long to make any sense of any data. Sure, part of it might be attributed to my poor researching skills but I am putting rest of the blame on the badly made PDFs and lack of digitization of data on the govt sites.
