Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Finalists Chosen In Apps For America 2 Contest

Posted by kdawson on from the you-paid-for-the-data-might-as-well-mash-it-up dept.

Andurin writes "Sunlight Labs has announced three finalists for its $25,000 Apps for America 2 competition. Forty-seven apps were submitted, each relying on Data.gov and providing a useful spin on government data. This We Know compiles federal information on a local level; govpulse is a searchable version of the Federal Register; and DataMasher allows simple mashups of government data sets. Voting is now open to determine the winner in the contest."

10 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. App suggestion. by palegray.net · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can we have an app that tells us where out tax dollars are really going, down to the dime? Thanks.

    --
    512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
    1. Re:App suggestion. by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd be happy with "down to the nearest $million", myself. With all the special allocations, supplemental funding bills, temporary shifts of funds, etc., it's nearly impossible to figure out what money is going where.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:App suggestion. by z-j-y · · Score: 2, Funny

      correction: *some Americans* voted for it, and *some Americans* are paying for it.

      it's like a group of rapists saying to the victim: *we* democratically and collectively decided to have a consensual sex, and you are responsible too!

  2. Initial thoughts on the three by Improv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like the layout of ThisWeKnow, and it's probably the application that I can most imagine my mother using. DataMasher is a bit more cryptic, but much more powerful - I'm worried about people drawing the wrong implications from the simple analyses, but it's interesting in a "data mining, damn the statistics and causality" kind of way. Govpulse isn't really interesting to me.

    I'd have a tough time chosing between ThisWeKnow and DataMasher, and I really hope both stick around after the award thing is over.

    --
    For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
    1. Re:Initial thoughts on the three by Zoop · · Score: 2, Informative

      DataMasher is a bit more cryptic, but much more powerful - I'm worried about people drawing the wrong implications from the simple analyses, but it's interesting in a "data mining, damn the statistics and causality" kind of way. [snip] I'd have a tough time chosing between ThisWeKnow and DataMasher, and I really hope both stick around after the award thing is over.

      Thanks! And yes, Datamasher, for one, will be here after the contest is long gone.

      We were concerned about appearing statistically valid when we knew very well it wouldn't be in most cases, so we chose to encourage discovery and discussion over rigor. We have ideas of things we'd like to do for it, but it was literally built over a few weekends after hours, limiting what we could do by the contest deadline.

      The cool thing about the contest is that all the applications are open source, so if a contestant can't maintain an application you like, the code will still be available for anybody who wants to perpetuate it. I'd encourage people not only to check out and vote on the finalists, but also check out the other entries that didn't make the final round--there were some good ideas in there, too.

  3. Can we vote for a voting method? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Even if Democrats and Republicans will never gracefully allow it in regular elections, competitions like this should offer preferential ballots with a Condorcet-compliant method of determining the winner.

  4. Another app suggestion... by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What would be a nice app to have (and would probably be simple to build) would be an app that would measure taxes vs benefits and compare it to current and projected birthrates and project into the future along with certain "disasters" that you could add. So you could find out if a certain bill would be sustainable. For example, you could put in data for, say, state run healthcare, birthrates, tax dollars, etc. and figure out if it would end up paying for itself. We don't need the public to be scammed into another version of social security that is not sustainable without unreasonable conditions such as an increasing birthrate (globally birth rates are down for most people, yes, the population keeps growing but the birthrate decreases leaving with more "useless" people than working people) and find out if it would require even more tax dollars.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  5. WallStats: Death and Taxes by Animaether · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Try this...

    http://wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ - WallStats: Death and Taxes ...it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of, say, a congresscritter getting moneys - but it goes into fairly reasonable detail.

    1. Re:WallStats: Death and Taxes by Trepidity · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to the FAQ, that's just based on the official, once-a-year budget request. So it doesn't include supplemental or temporary allocations, like the various Iraq War supplemental funding bills, the recent Cash for Clunker supplemental funding bill, the AIG bailout bill, etc. What I'd like to see is a total for, say, fiscal year 2008, of all money spent, both on- and off-budget.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  6. America 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    So we're just giving up and rebooting already? I figured we had at least another 20 years.