Over the last couple of months, I’ve been studying the Stimulus through the lens of the weekly reports published on recovery.gov.  My colleagues Erik Wilde and Eric Kansa (at the School of Information at UC Berkeley) and I made recommendations on how data feeds should be used to foster transparency around stimulus data, in addition […]
Irregularities at recovery.gov Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee Why are there two reports with the same date? This screenshot is from the reports from the Department of Labor on recovery.gov.
In my learning how to program Freebase, I’ve come across links to the Wikipedia that make use of a curid parameter. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=296716 is the same as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Akaka At least, the two pages seem to be the same thing as far as I can see. How to do a lookup btween curid and the […]
Tagged freebase, WikipediaI’m puzzled by how to provide the correct attribution to derivatives of Creative Commons licensed. Does one have to track the entire provenace of the object? I came across this problem when I wanted to upload a photo from the Wikipedia to Freebase. Here’s how I posed my question on the Freebase general support board: […]
Tagged creative commons, Flickr, freebase, WikipediaI think that there is certainly an important role for professional journalism, which can act as an invaluable filter. Overload! : CJR: To win the war for our attention, news organizations must make themselves indispensable by producing journalism that helps make sense of the flood of information that inundates us all. In the same issue […]
I just bought a copy of the 2009 New York Times Almanac last night and start wondering whether it would be a good idea to use the almanac format as a way of structuring some basic collections of facts/information you’d want to have in Freebase.
I will have to get cracking on studying the new Updated Implementing Guidance for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which came out last Friday, April 3. Here’s the news report from recovery.gov on this new set of guidelines: On April 3, 2009, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published Implementing Guidance […]
This morning, I wanted to make some progress on deciding on what type of incorporation I want to pursue for my new business. I spent time looking at Attorney, Stephen Fishman. Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & Consultants. 7th ed. NOLO, 2008. Weiss, Alan. Getting started in consulting. Getting started […]
Earlier in the week, Erik Wilde, Eric Kansa, and I published our technical report Proposed Guideline Clarifications for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a set of technical guidelines for how we think recovery.gov should publish data about how stimulus money is being spent and a prototype of what people can do with the […]
The Congressional Biographical Directory contains entries for every congressperson from 1774 to the present. Each congressional representative is associated with an identifier (a bioguide ID). For example, the bioguide ID for Edward (Ted) Kennedy is K000105. With this ID, you can determine the URL for the coresponding biographical directory — e.g., Kennedy’s is http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=K000105 I […]
Tagged congress, freebase