This graph has been generating attention recently about whether Obama’s cabinet lacks the private-sector experience present in other administrations. It reminds me of the incredible power of data to inform – or deceive.  Original story was made public here in Forbes.  Politifact.com said it was false and inaccurate here.

Many local governments are figuring out how to use the Internet to make government data more accessible. The goal is to spawn useful Web sites and mobile applications — and perhaps even have people think differently about their city and its government.

“It will change the way citizens and government interact, but perhaps most important, it’s going to change the way elected officials and civil servants deliver programs, services and promises,” said Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, which is one of the cities leading the way in releasing government data to Web developers. “I can’t wait until it challenges and infuriates the bureaucracy.”

Advocates of these open-data efforts say they can help citizens figure out what is going on in their backyards and judge how their government is performing.

This op-ed reminds me of once again of the purpose of Data360:  to bring clarity to the world about what is so.  For many of us, complicated analysis is overrated and we forget that many basic truths are not shared.  It chills my spine to think about the number of people who exist day-to-day with beliefs that are patently untrue, whether it be that America has declared war on Islam or that the holocaust did not occur.

This article on a fusion between Wikipedia and Google Maps reminds me of the book Groundswell (reviewed by Webster Pacific a while back) and which describes various ways that companies are harnessing volunteer labor. It also reminds me of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and a company called Crowdflower from Dolores Labs, with whom my friend Ray Solnik is working. Overall a great read into a new aspect of the data democratization trend.

Great article from Businessweek discussing the future of the App craze for businesses.

“The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN — the non-profit group that oversees domain names — is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as “.com” and other suffixes.

“One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN’s board at this week’s gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire Internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters. That could potentially open up the Web to more people around the world as addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic — in which Russian is written.”

Makes me think about the overwhelming amount of information that can and will be shared over the Internet. Also reminds me of the importance of quality in data and information, because so much of what is out there is just noise.

Pandora, an Internet radio service, is convinced that by pouring information through a computer into an algorithm, it can guide you, the listener, to music that you like. The premise is that your favorite songs can be stripped to parts and reverse-engineered.

What’s interesting to me is that our future is headed towards more and more data being applied to subjects which previously were considered “artistic.” Check out the New York Times article here.

That “Smart Choice” cereal you buy for your children may not be so smart after all. The Connecticut attorney general said that he was investigating a national labeling campaign that promotes products like Froot Loops and mayonnaise as nutritionally smart choices. Fascinating article from the New York Times.

As young people become used to reading everything online, public libraries across the country are expanding collections of books that reside on servers rather than shelves. Interesting article from the New York Times.

I gave the speech below to the Community Indicators Consortium (CIC) today.  CIC is a terrific group committed to the neutral presentation of data for the benefit of community advancement.  For more information about CIC, see www.communityindicators.net.   I am a member of the CIC and if you have an interest in joining, please email me and I will put you in touch with someone in membership.