SeeClickFix API contest.

[Ben B]

Hi all,
We would like to help apps for everywhere use the SeeClickFix API in
the contest.
Here is the documentation for the SCF API
http://help.seeclickfix.com/faqs/api/api-overview

[John Geraci]

Hey Ben - thanks for joining, and this is an awesome idea to work
SeeClickFix's API into a contest.

I think the first task at hand for any contest would be to collect as
many data sources as possible for people to use, and organize them
intelligently so people can get at them easily.

Maybe that means creating some sort of wiki where people (like you)
can post APIs and such. Or maybe that means making part of the
contest be about finding and organizing data. Not sure.

Anyway, building on the SCF API would be great.

Anyone else have any thoughts here?

-j.

[Dan Knauss]

The Sunlight Foundation started something like what you are describing in PBwiki. I don't know how/if it's grown.

Sent from my iPhone

[John Geraci]

Right, I seem to recall that happening a while back. I'll look into
it.

Another thing that I just realized could be an awesome thing to throw
into the mix here is Google Refine, just launched. I bet people could
whip together some awesome data sets for their cities with that.

Here's a note that just came in to the Sunlightlabs list that looks
pretty exciting:

<quote>
I just used Google refine to produce a list of all of the private
schools in Ontario, Canada.

I wrote a quick blog post detailing how I did it (text below). The
post contains screen shots, and links to the Google refine projects,
interim and final data.

BTW, if anyone needs a list of every schools in Canada (names,
addresses, phone numbers, etc.), let me know. I'll publish that data
in a few weeks, but you can have it now if you want it. (Also: where's
a good place to put it?)

Paul

http://paulschreiber.com/blog/2010/11/18/using-google-refine-to-produce-a-list-of-ontarios-private-schools/

<endquote>

Wonder what kind of stuff we could get cities everywhere doing with a
tool like that?

That could be a whole new kind of contest...

-j.

[Nick Grossman]

In an "apps for everywhere" contest, you'd ideally want to prioritize
datasets that were actually available everywhere. So maybe the first
step is to pick a few data sets that are there already or close, and
then spearhead an effort to scrape / produce APIs for the rest of the
data (using tools like Refine or others). In a way, this is similar
to what Sunlight is doing w/ 50 states (the second part).

On Nov 18, 9:32 pm, John Geraci <ger...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right, I seem to recall that happening a while back.  I'll look into
> it.
>
> Another thing that I just realized could be an awesome thing to throw
> into the mix here is Google Refine, just launched.  I bet people could
> whip together some awesome data sets for their cities with that.
>
> Here's a note that just came in to the Sunlightlabs list that looks
> pretty exciting:
>
> <quote>
> I just used Google refine to produce a list of all of the private
> schools in Ontario, Canada.
>
> I wrote a quick blog post detailing how I did it (text below). The
> post contains screen shots, and links to the Google refine projects,
> interim and final data.
>
> BTW, if anyone needs a list of every schools in Canada (names,
> addresses, phone numbers, etc.), let me know. I'll publish that data
> in a few weeks, but you can have it now if you want it. (Also: where's
> a good place to put it?)
>
> Paul
>

> http://paulschreiber.com/blog/2010/11/18/using-google-refine-to-produ...

[John Geraci]

Good points Nick.

I was just talking to Tom Lee from Sunlight about their states project
last night. Anything we did should definitely make use of the data
from that effort, and optimally even help promote it and get more
scraping to happen.

There's definitely a lot of potential for tie-ins here.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 23, 2010, at 4:09 PM, Nick Grossman <nickgr...@gmail.com>
wrote: