Monthly Archives: October 2011

Duck diving into online surf forecasts

Hurricane KatiaDuring hurricane season, my attention turns to the Atlantic Ocean. I keep an eye on swell-producing storms and use a variety of forecasting tools to get to the right spot for the best surf. But I never really thought about the data behind the tools I use.

There are many different stats brought together by today’s forecasting technology: Continue reading

Blazing an open data trail

Where do you start to standardize legislative information for all 50 United States? Blazing an open data trail for one state government isn’t easy, so shifting 50 must be nearly impossible. Or is it? The Open State Project is making progress towards the impossible—and closing in on the goal.

When I first heard about this project I thought, that’s cool—I wonder how they do it? Then I thought, this must be a nightmare. Can you imagine trying to scrape, sanitize, and standardize data from hundreds of different sources? Continue reading

Peace corps for geeks and more from Govloop

We’d like to highlight a few blog posts from GovLoop about open government and technology. In a previous post, we talked about GovLoop and the diversity and experience their community offers. It’s a social network for the government community, focused on connecting people and sharing information and boasting more than 45,000 members.

Here are a few posts that we think you’ll enjoy about capturing public comments, Code for America, and a new job and career resource. Continue reading