The USGS represented a lot of data on Data.gov in the early days of the contest, supplying developers with data about earthquakes and other geological information. As a result, we saw quite a few applications about earthquakes and other natural disasters led by visualization award winner QuakeSpotter. But that wasn't the only one.
SpendTrend.us shows an uptick in actual pork spending
That's what the Apps for America 2 honorable mention SpendTrend.us has to say at least. I like this entry a lot because it takes a complicated system like USASpending.gov and makes something really simple out of it. Where on USASpending.gov you have to navigate a giant search form SpendTrend.us gives us a simple search box.
App For America Honorable Mention: Budget
Over the next few days I'm going to be blogging about and announcing the honorable mentions for Apps for America. The toughest part of this contest, honestly, were that there were so many really interesting apps. I hope that all the contestants make another stab at it and keep at their current apps.
Continue readingThe Visualization Prize Goes To
With Apps for America 2 we wanted to give a special prize to the best visualization. Part of the reson why is because we think that building up the art community inside of Sunlight Labs is a priority and just as important to our mission as the development community. The other reason is because the only way to make big data accessible to people is often by presenting simple, easy to understand visualizations.
Continue readingThe Apps for America Finalists
And then there were three. After 47 great entries, we have three finalists in the Apps for America contest, and now it is time for us to figure out the winners. After taking a look at the winners, there's instructions on how to vote at the end of the post. The finalists are in random order:
Continue readingApps for America 2 Technology Showdown
While the judging for Apps for America 2 rolls on, let's do a little technology breakdown of the submissions.
Continue readingThe Entries are In
As the submission deadline has passed, we've been taking a look at the entries. You should too. They're really great. In total, we edged out our first Apps for America by just a few entries, ending up with 47 entries.
Continue readingApp for America Deadline a few hours away
We're having an exciting time watching great apps come in -- some great stuff! Remember, get your apps in before midnight pacific time today if you want to qualify! As they come in, we're going to vet them and make sure they qualify for the basic rules of the contest, then open it up for judging by our judges over the weekend.
The entries look great so far!
Continue readingWe won the Google/O’Reilly Open Source Awards
Last night at the Google Open Source awards, I won the "Best Community Builder" award on behalf on Sunlight Labs. While my name is at the top, I think that's a mistake-- I'm the "best community builder" because we have the best community.
This is only the beginning. In six months we've been able to do some amazing things-- 47 applications have been designed and inspired by our community, and developers are starting to wake up and realize that they're the key to making our government accountable, accessible and responsible. In a few months when Apps for America 2 is complete, with your hard work we'll have more applications that we can then use as justification to the government to release more data and make it easier for developers to work on the outside and on the inside.
Congratulations to you all!
Continue readingWhy Government Spends So Much on Software and Employees
As the person in the world that is least likely to become a government contractor, I will publicly state the obvious. Government spends a lot of money on software. $8.5 million is the price tag for Recovery.gov which is reasonable given what the Government is asking for. The White House Content Management System has a 16 Million contract on it. Or how about the 15 million dollars various agencies have spent this year on Sharepoint.
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