Data USA - Visualizing the American Community Survey

Deloitte, Datawheel, and Cesar Hidalgo, Professor at the MIT Media Lab and Director of MacroConnections, have created a Data USA to provide accessible visualizations of American Community Survey, Census data, and other sources of government data. Check out the profile for Greensboro!

Newest kid on the block: data.australia.gov.au

The Australian government is getting into the act of making public information datasets available online through data.australia.gov.au. The portal provides access to a variety of government datasets with most concentrated in environmental, community, geographic and transportation areas at the moment. My favorite is a shapefile of all Austrialian World Heritage properties! Many of the datasets have Creative Commons licenses, so feel free to have fun with them.

In fact, the Government 2.0 Taskforce is encouraging Australian users to enter the Mashup Australia Competition. Submit your mashups between October 7th and November 6th. The US version, Data.gov, should take a cue from the Australians and have a mashup competition!

Viewing government data in google earth

Here's a great post from Jeanne Kramer-Smyth at Free Government Information (FGI)

"One great way to get your head around large government datasets to view it using Google Earth. I went on a hunt for the most interesting, striking and geography based government data sets currently available in the KML format used by Google Earth. There is a large gallery of tours and layers available from Google Earth's site, including some based on government data - but I wanted to look beyond them.... Check out more of the entry at Free Government Information (FGI)!