Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
audio levels from mobile devices, in exchange for some kind of credits. Large telecoms
use techniques like that to build their location services.
Some of the extensions that have been suggested so far include the following:
City of Palo Alto
Help assess the impact of new zoning and building permits; e.g., are there poisonous
trees near a proposed day care center?
Calflora
Report concentrations of invasive trees or endangered species, or perhaps optimize
where to release beneficial insects.
Real estate
Optimize sales leads by comparing estimated allergy zones with buyers' preferences.
Start-ups
Some invasive tree species have valuable by-products like medicine, whereas others
can be converted to biodiesel for targeted harvest services.
Quite a large number of data APIs are available that could be leveraged to extend this
app:
•
Factual
for place data—along with CityGrid, Foursquare, Yelp, Localeze, YP, etc.
•
Trulia
for neighborhood data, housing prices, etc.
•
Google
for maps, photos, geocoding, etc.
•
Wunderground
for local weather data
•
WalkScore
for neighborhood data and walkability metrics
•
GeoWordNet
for semantic knowledge base about localized terms
• Various photo sharing APIs and Facebook Graph API in general
•
Beer
…need we say more?
The leverage for Open Data is about evolving feedback loops. This area represents a
greenfield for new approaches, new data sources, and new use cases. Overall, the app
shown here provides an interesting example to use for think-out-of-the-box exercises.
Fork it on GitHub and show us a new twist.
