Alex Williams has a great story on data journalism, on ReadWriteWeb. He lists a number of tools that can help anyone interested making sense of data, and sharing it publically.
His Five Tools for Online Journalism are:
- Factual provides simple APIs for building Web and mobile apps. It provides data on local geographies. The datasets include businesses and points of interest (parks, airports, theaters, tourist attractions, etc.), and attributes include: name, address, phone, category and latitude/longitude.”
- Socrata provides ways for federal, state and local governments to make data available online in a simple-to-use way.
- Google Fusion Tables, a Google Labs project, lets you host, manage, collaborate on, visualize, and publish data tables.
- Yahoo! Pipes can make anyone a data plumber. You can aggregate feeds and mashup information from around the Web.
- OpenHeatMap is another example of how to turn data into maps.
An OpenHeatMap of White Spaces in your community, for example, could be a handy asset. Tablets and visualization go together like peas in a pod. Visual Complexity, Google Maps Mania and Programmable web have more ideas.
Portland’s TriMet transportation system has been a leader in data sharing.
By making data on public transit accessible, TriMet has allowed for the creation of more than 35 phone applications since 2005.
Related Dailywireless stories about newspapers and data journalism include; Election Web Coverage, Nozzl: Local News Streaming Live, Tracking Tour de France, Trillion Node Network?, Tablet News, Mobile News via Paid Apps, Producing Olympic Multi-Media, HyperLocal: There’s an App for That, Neighborhood News: Big Time in Seattle, Coming Soon: Tablet Wars, Ocean Observatories: The Ultimate Splash Page, Rental Bikes: Free with Location-based Apps?.
