Elena Craft in GreenBiz: Michael Heimbinder, a Brooklyn entrepreneur, hopes to empower individuals with his small-scale air quality monitoring system, AirCasting. The AirCasting system uses a mobile, Bluetooth-enabled air monitor not much larger than a smartphone to measure carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and other pollutants. An accompanying Android app records and formats the information to an emissions map.
Alternatively, another instrument, the Air Quality Egg, comes pre-assembled ready to use. Innovative air monitoring systems, such as AirCasting or the Air Quality Egg, empower ordinary citizens to monitor the pollution they encounter daily and proactively address problematic sources of pollution.
This technology is part of a growing movement to enable the use of small sensors. In response to inquiries about small-sensor data, the EPA is researching the next generation of air measuring technologies. EPA experts are working with sensor developers to evaluate data quality and understand useful sensor applications. Through this ongoing collaboration, the EPA hopes to bolster measurements from conventional, stationary air-monitoring systems with data collected from individuals’ air quality microsensors….
Like many technologies emerging from the big data revolution and innovations in the energy sector, microsensing technology provides a wealth of high-quality data at a relatively low cost. It allows us to track previously undetected air pollution from traditional sources of urban smog, such as highways, and unconventional sources of pollution. Microsensing technology not only educates the public, but also helps to enlighten regulators so that policymakers can work from the facts to protect citizens’ health and welfare.
Siri’s Creators Demonstrate an Assistant That Takes the Initiative
Rachel Metz in MIT Technology Review: “In a small, dark, room off a long hallway within a sprawling complex of buildings in Silicon Valley, an array of massive flat-panel displays and video cameras track Grit Denker’s every move. Denker, a senior computer scientist at the nonprofit R&D institute SRI, is showing off Bright, an intelligent assistant that could someday know what information you need before you even ask.
Initially, Bright is meant to cut down on the cognitive overload faced by workers in high-stress, data-intensive jobs like emergency response and network security. Bright may, for instance, aid network administrators in trying to stop the spread of a fast-moving virus by quickly providing crucial infection information, or help 911 operators send the right kind of assistance to the scene of an accident. But like many other technologies developed at SRI, such as the digital personal assistant Siri (now owned by Apple), Bright could eventually trickle down to laptops and smartphones. It might take the form of software that automatically brings up listings for your favorite shows when it thinks you’re about to sit down and watch TV, or searches the Web for information relevant to your latest research project without requiring you to lift a finger….
Denker describes Bright as a “cognitive desktop” and “a desktop that really understands what you’re doing, and not just for you, but also in a collaborative setting for people….There’s a long way to go, however. The system is currently focused on “cognitive indexing”—the mechanism that ties various clues together and then tries to predict what is important.”
Capitol Words
About Capitol Words: “For every day Congress is in session, Capitol Words visualizes the most frequently used words in the Congressional Record, giving you an at-a-glance view of which issues lawmakers address on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Capitol Words lets you see what are the most popular words spoken by lawmakers on the House and Senate floor.
Methodology
The contents of the Congressional Record are downloaded daily from the website of the Government Printing Office. The GPO distributes the Congressional Record in ZIP files containing the contents of the record in plain-text format.
Each text file is parsed and turned into an XML document, with things like the title and speaker marked up. The contents of each file are then split up into words and phrases — from one word to five.
The resulting data is saved to a search engine. Capitol Words has data from 1996 to the present.”
Open Data Directory – Use Cases and Requirements
Word Wide Web Foundation: “Today, we’re pleased to be publishing a report entitled “Open Data Directory: Use Cases and Requirements”. The full report can be downloaded here.
As we noted in April when we released a draft for comment, quality rich information and content references are a need when you are dealing with innovative environments such as Open Data, where sharing and reusing are necessary routines in order to advance, and to give Open Data initiatives the visibility and recognition they need.
Although only a few years ago it was nearly impossible to find information and examples of Open Government Data initiatives and their components, there are currently a growing and varied number of Open Data resources all over the Web.
Given the increasing number of Open Data-related activities all around the world, and the social, economic or cultural diversity within the different countries, no single person or organization could grasp the whole scope of such a huge amount of information.
Any Government or organization interested in Open Data would greatly benefit from the existing and growing knowledge base and resources, so this scenario represents an invaluable opportunity to construct a neutral and trustable central directory that can help us to structure references, share best practices, and, generally speaking, mobilize the global Open Data community around it….”
Analyzing the Analyzers
An Introspective Survey of Data Scientists and Their Work,By Harlan Harris, Sean Murphy, Marck Vaisman: “There has been intense excitement in recent years around activities labeled “data science,” “big data,” and “analytics.” However, the lack of clarity around these terms and, particularly, around the skill sets and capabilities of their practitioners has led to inefficient communication between “data scientists” and the organizations requiring their services. This lack of clarity has frequently led to missed opportunities. To address this issue, we surveyed several hundred practitioners via the Web to explore the varieties of skills, experiences, and viewpoints in the emerging data science community.We used dimensionality reduction techniques to divide potential data scientists into five categories based on their self-ranked skill sets (Statistics, Math/Operations Research, Business, Programming, and Machine Learning/Big Data), and four categories based on their self-identification (Data Researchers, Data Businesspeople, Data Engineers, and Data Creatives). Further examining the respondents based on their division into these categories provided additional insights into the types of professional activities, educational background, and even scale of data used by different types of Data Scientists.
In this report, we combine our results with insights and data from others to provide a better understanding of the diversity of practitioners, and to argue for the value of clearer communication around roles, teams, and careers.”
Xeroc PARC Tackles Online Dating’s Biggest Conundrum
The Physics arXiv Blog: “Online dating has changed the way people start relationships. In 2000, a few hundred thousand individuals were experimenting with online dating. Today, more than 40 million people have signed up to meet their dream man or woman online. That kind of success is reflected in the fact that this industry is currently worth some $1.9 billion in annual revenue.
Of course, nobody would claim that online dating is the perfect way to meet a mate. One problem in particular is whether to trust the information that a potential date has given. How do you know that this person isn’t being economical with the truth?…
The new approach is simple. The idea these guys have come up with is to use an app that connects to a person’s Facebook page (or other social network page) and then compare the information there with the information on the dating profile. If the data is the same, then it is certified. The beauty of this system is that the Facebook details are not open to external scrutiny—the app does not take, make public or display any information from the social network. It simply compares the information from the two sites.
Any discrepancy indicates that something, somewhere is wrong and the ambiguous details are not then certified….this process of certification gives users a greater sense of security because Facebook data is largely peer reviewed already.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1303.4155: Bootstrapping Trust in Online Dating: Social Verification of Online Dating Profiles”
How Open Data Can Fight Climate Change
New blog post by Joel Gurin, Founder and Editor, OpenDataNow.com: When people point to the value of Open Data from government, they often cite the importance of weather data from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That data has given us the Weather Channel, more accurate forecasts, and a number of weather-based companies. But the most impressive – and one of the best advertisements for government Open Data – may well be The Climate Corporation, headquartered in San Francisco.
Founded in 2006 under the name WeatherBill, The Climate Corporation was started to sell a better kind of weather insurance. But it’s grown into a company that could help farmers around the world plan around climate change, increase their crop yields, and become part of a new green revolution.
The company’s work is especially relevant in light of President Obama’s speech yesterday on new plans to fight climate change. We know that whatever we do to reduce carbon emissions now, we’ll still need to deal with changes that are already irreversible. The Climate Corporation’s work can be part of that solution…
The company has developed a new service, Climate.com, that is free to policyholders and available to others for a fee….
Their work may become part of a global Green Revolution 2.0. The U.S. Government’s satellite data doesn’t stop at the border: It covers the entire planet. The Climate Corporation is now looking for ways to apply its work internationally, probably starting with Australia, which has relevant data of its own.
Start with insurance sales, end up by changing the world. The power of Open Data has never been clearer.”
Quantifying Our Cities, Ourselves
David Sasaki in Next City: “Over the past few years a merry band of geeks from around the world has given rise to the movement of the quantified self. The mission, as the geeks explain it, is “self knowledge through numbers.” Vanity Fair sarcastically calls them “weirder, hive minder weight watchers.”
The basic premise of the quantified self is perhaps best summed up by a popular slogan from business consultant Peter Drucker: “What gets measured gets managed.” If we aspire to run faster, then we must use a stopwatch to time our pace. If we want to lose weight, then we must buy a scale to measure our progress until we reach our goal. Modern self-trackers have the advantages of apps that make it possible to quantitatively analyze sleep, moods, finances, vital signs and even amino acids, all without consulting a single other person….
What if we were to apply the model of the quantified self to the development of our cities? It’s a question that appears to be gaining steam. Esther Dyson, an influential angel investor and technology analyst, has observed the emergence of a suite of applications that enable citizens and governments to monitor the “health” of their communities.
Civic Insight, for example, has partnered with New Orleans to enable citizens to monitor what the local government is doing to address blight. On Monday, the project was announced as one of eight winners of the 2013 Knight News Challenge, which means that the software will be expanding for use in other cities. Yelp has partnered with New York and San Francisco to make restaurant inspection data available on restaurant profile pages. (Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago have already committed to making their restaurant inspection data available using the same standard.) The Daily Brief allows residents of Baltimore, Bloomington and Boston to monitor all the 311 service requests made by citizens each day.”
Transforming Government Acquisition Systems: Overview and Selected Issues
New Report of the Congressional Research Service: “Increasingly, the federal government uses technology to facilitate and support the federal acquisition process. Primary beneficiaries of this shift to online systems (websites and databases) are the government’s acquisition workforce and prospective and incumbent government contractors. The suite of web-based systems supports contracting officers’ efforts to ensure the government contracts only with responsible parties, is essential to the dissemination of information regarding contracting opportunities, and facilitates interagency contracting. From the contractor perspective, the government’s online systems streamline the processes involved in fulfilling various administrative requirements, provide access to possible contracting opportunities, and are potential resources for market research.
Although this report does not focus on transparency, several issues discussed here are related to transparency. First, while the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) website and FPDS-NG provide information about executive branch agencies’ procurements, a database of federal agencies’ contracts does not exist. In 2003, GSA established a working group to examine the feasibility, challenges, and anticipated benefits of posting federal contracts online. Ultimately, the working group concluded there were insufficient data to support recommending the establishment of a central system for posting contracts online. In 2010, the Department of Defense (DOD), GSA, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) regarding posting contracts online. Comments submitted in response to the notice identified several challenges, and the matter was concluded when the agencies withdrew the ANPR. Second, transparency does not necessarily equate to comprehension. Generally, variation exists among the users of government procurement systems regarding their knowledge of government procurement and procurement data. Third, during the 113th Congress, two similar bills (H.R. 2061 and S. 994) with the same name (Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act) were introduced, either of which would enhance transparency of spending data, including certain procurement data. If either bill is enacted, it might have implications for FPDS-NG.”
Knight News Challenge on Open Gov
Press Release: “Knight Foundation today named eight projects as winners of the Knight News Challenge on Open Gov, awarding the recipients more than $3.2 million for their ideas.
The projects will provide new tools and approaches to improve the way people and governments interact. They tackle a range of issues from making it easier to open a local business to creating a simulator that helps citizens visualize the impact of public policies on communities….
Each of the winning projects offers a solution to a real-world need. They include:
Civic Insight: Providing up-to-date information on vacant properties so that communities can find ways to make tangible improvements to local spaces;
OpenCounter: Making it easier for residents to register and create new businesses by building open source software that governments can use to simplify the process;
Open Gov for the Rest of Us: Providing residents in low-income neighborhoods in Chicago with the tools to access and demand better data around issues important to them, like housing and education;
Outline.com: Launching a public policy simulator that helps people visualize the impact that public policies like health care reform and school budget changes might have on local economies and communities;
Oyez Project: Making state and appellate court documents freely available and useful to journalists, scholars and the public, by providing straightforward summaries of decisions, free audio recordings and more;
Procur.io: Making government contract bidding more transparent by simplifying the way smaller companies bid on government work;
GitMachines: Supporting government innovation by creating tools and servers that meet government regulations, so that developers can easily build and adopt new technology;
Plan in a Box: Making it easier to discover information about local planning projects, by creating a tool that governments and contractors can use to easily create websites with updates that also allow public input into the process.
…
Now in its sixth year, the Knight News Challenge accelerates media innovation by funding breakthrough ideas in news and information. Winners receive a share of $5 million in funding and support from Knight’s network of influential peers and advisors to help advance their ideas. Past News Challenge winners have created a lasting impact. They include: DocumentCloud, which analyzes and annotates public documents – turning them into data; Tools for OpenStreetMap, which makes it easier to contribute to the editable map of the world; and Safecast, which helps people measure air quality and became the leading provider of pollution data following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
For more, visit newschallenge.org and follow #newschallenge on Twitter.