According to an article out of the organization yesterday, “The ODI is today launching Open Data Certificates to help everyone find, understand and use open data that is being released. The new certificates are being announced by CEO Gavin Starks at a G8 Summit event: Open for Growth. The certificates have been created in response to business, government, and citizen needs to bring rigour to the publication, dissemination and usage of open data. Over the last six months, ODI has been collaborating with dozens of organisations around the world to define the certificates. Today sees their first Beta release.” Read more

At a session discussing open data on the web at the Semantic Technology and Business Conference last week, W3C eGov consultant Phil Archer had this to say: That in his mind and the minds of the semantic web technology business people gathered at the event, “Open data is strongly associated with Linked Data, but the world doesn’t necessarily agree with us.”

What they are thinking about: “JSON and CSVs are the kings,” he said. “If you look at open data portals, CSVs [which get converted to JSON files] outweigh Linked Data by a mile,” he noted. And, he said, religious wars between those who see the world as triples vs. CSVs won’t be good for anyone. “If we keep telling the public sector to aim for 5-star data, vs. CSV 3-star data, we are in danger of the whole open data movement collapsing.”

No one wants that, and to address the big picture of realizing the promise of open data, April saw The Open Data on the Web workshop take place. It was organized by the W3C, the Open Data Institute, founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, and the Open Knowledge Foundation.

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Rip Empson of TechCrunch reports, “Ijad Madisch started ResearchGate in 2008 to change the scientific method, and depending on where you sit, that either is or isn’t as ambitious as it sounds. Madisch isn’t on a crusade to overturn the techniques scientists use to investigate and systematically observe phenomena, so much as the tools… One of the biggest problems to plague scientific research, innovation and breakthroughs is redundancy. A team of scientists hard at work on protein data analysis publish their results only to learn that a group on the opposite side of the world has just done the same. As both a physician and a researcher, Madisch decided that the best way to reduce research redundancy would be to create an online professional network in which scientists could easily share data, information and results. Research would become more effective, and science would be better for it.” Read more

After days full of technically-focused sessions at SemTechBiz, Hans Constandt’s keynote this morning, ONTOFORCE: Links for Lives, was a thought-provoking break from technicality. Instead of delving into the specifics of how ONTOFORCE–the Belgian startup where Hans currently serves as CEO–is using various semantic tools, leveraging taxonomies, or monetizing their products, Hans instead stepped back and reminded us all of the much bigger picture: Linked open data can save lives.

Hans started his talk by sharing three stories from his own life of family members who have faced rare illnesses and struggled to find the health information they needed. Hans was able to help his family members find access to vital health information after a great deal of time, effort, and investment. But after helping those closest to him, he didn’t want to stop there. Each condition he researched was rare, but that meant that other people in the world facing similarly rare conditions were undoubtedly entrenched in the same struggle to obtain quality information.
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The Second International Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives, and Museums Summit has announced the finalists of the LODLAM Challenge. The finalists were broken into two heats. In the first heat, the finalists are Free Your Metadata, ReLOAD, and Linked Jazz. In the second heat, the finalists are Pundit and Mismuseos.net. The LODLAM team commented, “This rounds out the slate of 5 challenge finalists that will be competing head-to-head at the LODLAM Summit June 19-20, 2013 in Montreal. All finalists have earned travel grants for the trip to Montreal and the chance to win a $2000USD cash prize. A big thank-you to all the teams who submitted entries. It was great to see such creativity and wide range of ideas. The LODLAM community rose to the challenge and amazed us.” Read more

Todd Park

Justin Kern of Information Management reports, “The U.S. government is outlining its new program for an open source repository to foster collaboration on getting more information to citizens in a faster manner. Federal CTO Todd Park formally introduced Project Open Data on Thursday in a blog post, and gave an update on its first days of activity. In the first 24 hours after Project Open Data was published, more than two dozen contributors submitted to its GitHub platform, including fixes to broken Web links and policy input. Other, meatier contributions, or ‘pull requests,’ included a tool that converts spreadsheets and databases into APIs for ease of use by developers, and code that translates geographic data from locked formats into open, available formats, according to Park.” Read more

Prachi Patel of IEEE Spectrum reports, “Farmers today produce three times as much food as they did 50 years ago using just 12 percent more land, thanks to new technologies and better farming practices. But the global playing field isn’t level. In Africa, farmers produce a fraction of what they could, according to the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, and most barely get by, struggling against infertile soil, drought, and diseases. Helping farmers—in Africa and elsewhere—produce more will be key to lifting millions out of poverty and sustainably feeding a world population of 9 billion in 2050. Food-policy experts believe that a crucial step toward that goal is to give farmers, scientists, and entrepreneurs unhindered access to agricultural data which is generated at research centers worldwide.” Read more

Danny Palmer of Computing.co.uk reports, “US President Barack Obama has signed an executive order that requires government agencies to make publicly accessible data open and machine readable. ‘Government information shall be managed as an asset throughout its life cycle to promote interoperability and openness, and, wherever possible and legally permissible, to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, accessible, and usable,’ reads the Open Data Policy order. In 2009, Obama pledged to make his administration the most open in the history of US government. The administration hopes that innovators, including researchers and entrepreneurs, will be able to examine and use the data to benefit the country.” Read more

Paul Miller of Cloud of Data recently discussed the issue of proper data attribution. He writes, “There have always, it seems, been people for whom attribution and citation really matter. Some of them passionately engage in arguments that last months or years, debating the merits of comma placement in written citations for the work of others. Bizarre, right? But, as we all become increasingly dependent upon data sourced from third parties, aspects of this rather esoteric pastime are beginning to matter to a far broader audience. Products, recommendations, decisions and entire businesses are being constructed on top of data sourced from trusted partners, from new data brokers, from crowdsourced communities, or simply plucked from across the open web.”

Miller continues, “Without an understanding of where that data came from, and how it was collected, interpreted or maintained, all of those products, recommendations, decisions and businesses stand upon very shaky foundations indeed. Read more

BOSTON, May 8, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — karmadata officially introduced its freemium website (www.karmadata.com) and API (www.karmadata.com/API) to the global data community at the Data 2.0 Summit held April 30th in San Francisco.  karmadata’s website enables users to find, visualize, and share data of interest to them and their social networks.  The karmadata API provides standardized linked data from the world’s data sources, allowing developers to design and build their own applications. Read more