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InfoCommons: An Open Platform For Public Data

Location-based technologies are evolving at a rapid pace, and are on the verge of opening up an exciting array of new application possibilities. But right now grass-roots innovation is being stifled. Why? Because high quality information is hard or impossible to get. Sometimes it is bound by restrictive copyrights. Sometimes it is in difficult-to-use formats. Sometimes it simply doesn't exist, because it's too expensive to create. MAYA Design has created the Information Commons to eliminate these problems. Part of our solution is technical: providing the means to incrementally blend many different kinds of information from different sources, and to have many authors contribute and enrich the information through an open architecture. Part of the solution is social: providing a means for information that ought to be public to in fact be accessible and easy to get to. We believe that combining the explosion of location-based technologies with the growth of a community committed to easily accessible public information is necessary to bring about a truly innovative future. Josh Knauer will present several active Information Commons projects underway at the Brookings Institution, the Heinz Endowments and other non-profit and government agencies that are taking advantage of the open, distributed architecture. These projects span many diverse fields, including neighborhood information systems, environmental health tracking, human services referral systems and outdoor recreation. http://www.rhizalabs.com

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82 views27 pages

InfoCommons: An Open Platform For Public Data

Location-based technologies are evolving at a rapid pace, and are on the verge of opening up an exciting array of new application possibilities. But right now grass-roots innovation is being stifled. Why? Because high quality information is hard or impossible to get. Sometimes it is bound by restrictive copyrights. Sometimes it is in difficult-to-use formats. Sometimes it simply doesn't exist, because it's too expensive to create. MAYA Design has created the Information Commons to eliminate these problems. Part of our solution is technical: providing the means to incrementally blend many different kinds of information from different sources, and to have many authors contribute and enrich the information through an open architecture. Part of the solution is social: providing a means for information that ought to be public to in fact be accessible and easy to get to. We believe that combining the explosion of location-based technologies with the growth of a community committed to easily accessible public information is necessary to bring about a truly innovative future. Josh Knauer will present several active Information Commons projects underway at the Brookings Institution, the Heinz Endowments and other non-profit and government agencies that are taking advantage of the open, distributed architecture. These projects span many diverse fields, including neighborhood information systems, environmental health tracking, human services referral systems and outdoor recreation. http://www.rhizalabs.com

Uploaded by

macurak
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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InfoCommons: An Open Platform for Public Data

Josh Knauer
MAYA Design
A “where” problem

Where’s my house?
The commercial data providers don’t know

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Neither does the federal government…
I know where my house is…

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
We need a better way for
everyone to correct data
We need a better way for
everyone to share data
We need a better way for
everyone to reuse data
We need a better way for
everyone to access data
We have a plan.
Who the heck are we?

Technology research lab spun


out of Carnegie Mellon

$50 million in federal research to


pursue dream of “information
liquidity”

Our goal: to build a scalable


information space that can
support trillions of devices
Our recipe for data sharing

• Frame your data as abstract, linkable 
objects.  We call them u­forms. 
Recipe for data sharing

• u­forms 
• Make sure attribution is included in 
every u­form (IP Status, Author, etc).
Recipe for data sharing

• u­forms
• attribution
• Pour that data into a shared, 
distributed, and of course… open 
information space.  Stir.  We call that 
space the Information Commons.
Recipe for data sharing

• u­forms QuickTimeª and a


TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture
• attribution 
• distributed info space Custom Apps

• Build applications that reuse, mix and 
mash data from the Commons into  QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
whatever format you need.
Web Apps

Mobile Apps
Recipe for data sharing

• u­forms
• attribution 
• distributed info space
• build. reuse, mix and mash
QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
• let end­users be contributors are needed to see this picture.
We’re helping individuals, non-
profits and government agencies
grow the Information Commons
Brookings Institution - community info systems

Find properties that match the following:


Buskarma - public transit info

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Transit data reused for human service referrals

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
HS data reused & enhanced by A+ Schools
Environmental health risks in your community
Environmental health data: where users can act
Helping biologists track endangered wildlife
Coming later this summer… Workbench

QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Coming later this summer… Workbench

QuickTimeª and a
QuickTimeª and a areTIFF (LZW) decompressor
needed to see this picture.
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Coming soon…

• More apps
• Easy to use content creation/editing tools
• Technical docs and open APIs
• More and richer data

More info, white papers, etc:


http://www.maya.com/infocommons

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