open data

What is Metadata and why is it as important as the data itself?
Metadata. You may have heard the term before, and may have asked yourself either “what is metadata” or “why is it as important as data?” This article will be an attempt to clear up those two subjects. As this can often be quite dense, let’s jump right in! Metadata can

The State of Open Data in Germany: From Missed Opportunities to Great Successes
When attending an Open Data Conference in Germany these days, one might wonder whether the participants have discovered a new type of species. A mysterious species that knows what to do with data. An intelligent species that is able to find treasures on confusing websites and to understand government speech

NASA’s Big Data Climate Change Model
When both NASA and the Pope are speaking out about climate change, you know something is up. Yesterday the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) unveiled a public data set showing how rainfall, temperature and CO2 levels will change over the next 85 years. The high-resolution data, which is as granular as

Twitter Pulls Plug on Data Feed Sharing; Third Party Resellers Lose Access to Firehose
Twitter has pulled the plug on its data feed ecosystem by revoking access of its syndicated data feed of all tweets generated throughout the microblogging site, collectively called the ‘Firehose,’ to all partnered third parties. The move comes as a followup to its acquisition of the social media API aggregation

Hamburg Startup Lobbies for Online Transparency with “Free Your Data” Campaign
German startup Protonet are spearheading the ‘Free Your Data’ initiative to bring about the setting up of a new law that would enable individual access to personal data held by corporations. Launched earlier last week, Free Your Data aims” to action a new law to stop the pursuit, exploitation and profit

15 IT & Big Data Titans Come Together to Establish the US Open Data Platform
IT companies and business heavyweights are joining forces in a shared industry effort focused on promoting and advancing the state of Apache Hadoop and Big Data technologies for the enterprise. Introducing the Open Data Platform Initiative (ODP) which will in essence, help enterprises enhance business value globally with Hadoop. Founding
UK Government Calls for Evidence to Launch Banking API Standard
At the Autumn Statement 2014 the UK government published the report ‘Data Sharing and Open Data for Banks’ written by the Open Data Institute and consultancy firm Fingleton Associates. The government committed to launch a call for evidence on how best to deliver an open standard for application programming interfaces

White House Urginig Data Transparency Through Their Open Data Initiatives
In the wake of President Obama’s May 2013 executive order on open data, the Obama administration has launched a string of Open Data Initiatives to make valuable data in areas such as health, energy, education, public safety, finance, and global development available to the public and federal authorities, Nick Sinai,

US Senators Awaken Public Interest in Patient Data Sharing
Two US Senators from the Senate Finance Committee, Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Ron Wyden, have been advocating the need to make Medicare data available to the public to make Medicare claims data fully transparent while remaining secure. In a bid to involve masses in the exploration towards making healthcare

Open Data Institute Director Calls for More Open Data
To say the Open Data Institude (ODI) know a thing or two about big data would be understatement. In the 18 months since it opened its doors as an all-in-one data science school, research institute, startup accelerator, and business franchise, they’ve made a mark on the big data market. They’ve