Something's Happening in Data -- WAMC's Roundtable, Tuesday, 3/23/2010, 11 AM

It's time to do some connecting of the dots. What do the US Government, Apple's iPad, the floor of the Pacific Ocean, the new HTML standard for Web pages, and the City of Plattsburgh have in common? Hint: it's something about data. Here are some URLs we'll probably be talking about on The Roundtable on Tuesday.

US Government

It's not just data at data.gov. The emphasis is on machine-readable data (think CSV, XML, KML, and SHP), tools (in all sizes--even wallet cards), and geodata. And the invitation is for people not just to browse the data but to combine and transform it into a variety of uses.

Related to data.gov is search.usa.gov which is exactly what the name implies. Try out the image search.

Apple's iPad

Check out the storage capacity of the new iPad line. The quality of the text and images is phenomenal, but what's going to fill those iPads? Apple is focusing on content now--rumors abound and will be revealed (or debunked) when the product ships on April 3.

Floor of the Pacific Ocean

Google is expected to announce completion of a fast Internet cable from the U.S. to Japan this week. Google will get 20% of the total capacity for its needs -- which are vast. CNET reports the project cost a mere $300 million.

HTML 5

The newest standard is available here. One of the features is a specification (still in flux) for offline data storage. See related concepts at Google Data Protocol and Open Data Protocol.

Data Centers in Plattsburgh?

Where will all this data live? How will it be accessed? Yahoo! is building a data center in Lockport, NY, and Plattsburgh is among other cities testing the waters. 

Vast amounts of data, new places to store it, new ways to retrieve it, and new things to do with it using standards-compliant software that is often open source... What will we see next? No one knows for sure, but the invitations are out there. data.gov asks people to share their mashups and other uses of data. Google is offering to provide very high-speed Internet to selected communities to see what they will do with it. And Apple is searching for an Independent Publisher Account Manager for iBookstore -- the job description includes

Responsible for building and growing relationships with small and medium-size book publishers, self-published authors, and other content providers for the iBookstore... Identify and build relationships with independent content providers, helping them get their content onto the iBookstore.

Stay tuned.