Tag Archives: Information Commons

David Chartier at Ars Technica notes that social networking services must break down the silos that separate them or decline into irrelevance like AOL. As quality, free content grew on the Internet outside of AOL, people abandoned the premium service — two-thirds of them. Chartier notes that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are next. People are pouring too much value — photos, notes, Tweets, posts — into these sites to tolerate having to recreate their content on each individual service. As soon as a unified point-of-entry to social networking is unleashed — the free, public Internet to AOL’s “walled garden” — today’s industry giants may become tomorrow’s lumbering dinosaurs.

If we won’t tolerate silos for general Web content, and we won’t tolerate silos for social networking, why do we tolerate silos for public data„

Just to map crime and population in my neighborhood, I have to download shapefiles for Census tracts from one U.S. government service, population statistics from another, and then hope that I can track down crime statistics from some obscure bureau of my municipal government. (Adding insult to injury, that municipality might even try to make me pay for them, even though I already have with my tax dollars.) After this maddening scavenger hunt comes the fun part — I get to fight with my mapping platform to somehow make all this data from different sources look somewhat coherent.

It doesn’t have to be like this. At Rhiza Labs, we’re already deploying tools that provide a seamless, unified point-of-access to many different databases. Thanks to the Information Commons, Pittsburghers can use HumanServices.net to search both the county Department of Human Services and the local United Way’s human service directories while also getting bus directions — without even knowing they’re looking at multiple databases.

Don’t like our tools„ Build your own. We provide full REST API access to our platforms, so you can build your own interface or even compile a mash-up. United Way of Pittsburgh has its own spin on HumanServices.net that still accesses the same data. And if you don’t like our database„ Pull the information and take it elsewhere. FluTracker syndicates every update to RSS, Google Earth, and CSV, and major corporations and government agencies are using these feeds to complement their corporate security planning.

Right now, services that can’t integrate silos of data take their toll on us — by forcing us to make decisions with less information. Soon, services that can’t integrate silos of data will feel a toll themselves — a decline into irrelevance as a new paradigm, based on information liquidity, takes hold. Call it glastnost for the information age.

Join Rhiza Labs at the URISA GIS in Public Health Conference for a discussion of how Information Commons principles are helping public health administrators to make better decisions, faster, with more information. Rhiza’s Chief Product Officer Jeff Christensen will give two presentations:

• “Creating Incentives and Pathways for Sharing Public GIS Data,” June 6, 10:30 AM – 12 noon at the Web Delivery of Health Data breakout session.
• “Building a Comprehensive Pandemic Tracking System in Less Than 48 Hours,” June 6, 1:30 – 3 PM in the Pandemic/Avian Flu breakout session.

If you’re interested in meeting up, tweet @rhizajeff for a personalized demonstration.

The sci-fi thriller “Minority Report” envisioned a world in which virtually any surface could convey information. Mickey McManus, president and CEO of MAYA Design, says “the trillion-node network” that would make such a world possible will be upon us within five years. [...]

The problem, Mr. McManus says, is that we aren’t equipped for the complexity generated by all of the “smart stuff” that we are creating: VCRs that never stopped blinking “12:00″ were just a harbinger of an even larger gulf developing between what our technology can do and how well we can use it. [...]

“Humans haven’t designed anything for a trillion before,” he said. No version of Windows, no distribution of Linux, can scale to that level. The only thing we have that can is peer-to-peer networking.

–Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5/13/2009

Rhiza was born from MAYA’s vision of eliminating disparate silos of data to unite the facts and figures of the world into a resource available to everyone. We call this technology the Information Commons, and it’s how all three of our platforms revolutionize the way governments, nonprofits, and businesses manage their data. Read more about how the Information Commons is changing the relationship between people, agencies, and data.

Don’t miss the 2009 Pennsylvania GIS Conference on May 19 and 20 in Grantville, PA. From the conference’s organizers:

This year’s Pennsylvania GIS Conference will explore the essential connection between geospatial technology and the development and sustainability of our critical infrastructure. Presenters from industry, academia, and government will showcase applications that support critical infrastructures in water resources, energy and the environment, public safety and health, and economic development. In addition, the latest hardware, software, and database trends will be demonstrated by the geospatial industry. This year it’s all technology and applications – no policy, no politics! Just pure GIS.

Josh Knauer, CEO of Rhiza Labs, will deliver the keynote address, “Geospatial Data Sharing in the Information Commons World” at 9:15 AM on May 19. His presentation will use the Information Commons to explain how social entrepreneurship in the geospatial community can stimulate new and useful thinking about data sharing. Additionally, Rhiza Labs will host a breakout session entitled “Creating Incentives for Sharing Public GIS Data” at 3:15 on May 19.

The conference, an outreach service of the Center for Geospatial Information Services and the Institute for State and Regional Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, runs May 19 and 20 at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Conference Center in Grantville, PA. Visit the Pennsylvania GIS Conference page to register and reserve a room at the conference rate. E-mail us at or tweet @rhiza if you’d like to meet with us at the conference.

Communicating the impact of your organization to clients, constituents and funders„ Posting information on the Internet is only the first step. Telling a compelling story requires thoughtful analysis that makes the hidden connections within your information apparent and highlights your successes. Conventional technology cannot do this for your stakeholders; Rhiza Labs can.

The yet-to-be mined treasure trove of unmade connections between data is called the Deep Web. Making the hidden connections between your data apparent — accessing the Deep Web — is essential. It promotes transparency and participation in decision making and goes a long way toward securing and maintaining the support of funders and other stakeholders. Making these connections can also be labor-intensive. With money tight and demands high, organizations have even more reason to turn to technology to simplify the analysis of information. By doing so, they make critical analysis easier to accomplish with fewer person-hours.

Yet technology is not always up to the task. As the New York Times notes: “With millions of databases connected to the Web, and endless possible permutations of search terms, there is simply no way for any search engine — no matter how powerful — to sift through every possible combination of data on the fly.” Read more »

Josh Knauer, CEO of Rhiza Labs, will deliver the keynote address to attending GIS professionals, scholars, nonprofit and government staff at the 2009 Pennsylvania GIS Conference on May 19. His presentation will use the Information Commons to explain how social entrepreneurship in the geospatial community can stimulate new and useful thinking about data sharing.

The conference, an outreach service of the Center for Geospatial Information Services and the Institute for State and Regional Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, runs May 19 and 20 at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Conference Center in Grantville, PA.

Visit the Pennsylvania GIS Conference page to register and reserve a room at the conference rate.

If Flickr closed tomorrow and turned off its servers without a word to its users, what would happen to all our photos„ They would go the way of our GeoCities sites and our AOL Hometown Pages, of course — except for the copies that users had saved on their own hard drives.

What if the Library of Congress, like most libraries across the nation, faced such severe funding cuts that it did not have the funds necessary to preserve our nation’s public documents„ What if the outgoing President of the United States deleted all electronic records of his communications under the assertion of executive privilege„

Read more »

In December, Google discontinued its Google Research Datasets service. The idea behind the service was great: Google provided scientists who needed to share very large datasets with storage space in the Google cloud of servers. Their decision to cut the service is part of larger belt-tightening effort as a result of an alarming 68% drop in their fourth quarter profit from the previous year. I don’t blame Google for taking this action, but it nonetheless is a jarring example of how putting all of your data eggs in one basket can be very dangerous.

It’s great to see researchers and others in the public sector sharing more and more of their data. Trouble is, most of the data they’re sharing exist on one server, housed either on-site, or by third parties like Google’s now defunct service or Amazon.com Public Data Sets. The problem with this particular approach is that when servers crash, companies decide to drop their services or political winds change, the data disappear forever.

Our ancestors made this same mistake during the third century BC with the creation of the Library of Alexandria. The Library was charged with collecting all of the world’s knowledge, which it accomplished with monetary and other support from the royalty of the time. When the Library was destroyed, most of the source copies of much of the world’s documented knowledge vanished along with it.

Will we repeat this mistake, or is there a better way„ Read more »

America has entered an era of government expenditure unheard-of since the 1960s, if not the 1930s, yet its cash reserves are lower than ever. The New York Times reports that China is losing its taste for U.S. debt, cutting off one huge supply of easy credit that fueled the massive expansion of government after September 11th. Obama warned of a trillion-plus dollar deficit accumulating from this expansion and the ongoing effort to stimulate the economy — a burden he believes the American people will be unwilling to bear “unless we take extraordinary steps to ensure that the investments are made wisely and managed well.” How will we recognize “wisely and … well”„

Read more »

In June 2008, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain collaborated on a groundbreaking bill to post the full text of all federal contracts with private agencies online for public review. Senate Bill 3077, the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008, died in committee and was stricken from the books when the 111th Congress met earlier this week. Meanwhile, just as S.B. 3077 was wiped from memory, a cascade of government-related financial fiascos began. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson declined appointment as Secretary of Commerce amid allegations that his administration improperly awarded a contract to a California consulting firm. Read more »