Seven Reasons I Think "Datamasher" is So Cool (and Deserves Your Vote!)

I'm very excited that our Datamasher web site is one of the three finalists in the Sunlight Foundation's "Apps for America 2" Contest! The other two finalists are very interesting sites, but here are my thoughts on why Datamasher is very cool and deserving of your vote! by September 7th.

So, in brief, what is Datamasher? Datamasher is a web site where anyone can "mash-up" two sets of Federal data about US States to create a custom indicator, which can then be viewed by all on a State-by-State map or chart. Not only can visitors create their own indicators - they can comments on others indicators, share indicators on various social media sites, and "rate" their favorite indicators!

Why is Datamasher so cool? Here are my top seven reasons:

7. It's social! Datamasher is an example of "Gov2.0" - or Web2.0 functionality for the government - allowing people to themselves create their own indicators, share them with others, comment on others indicators, and rate their favorites. I think a great way to get people to better understand issues of the day relating to government, is to give then tools to themselves explore and interact with others around government content and data. For example, see the comments back and forth about "$$ Spent per student and SAT Score", or "How Likely Are Your Gun Owners to Shoot Somebody". You can also look at the profile page for "scotland77" to see his/her indicators and comments to others - giving you a sense of who else is exploring the data.

6. Datamasher is a platform which will get more valuable with time! The other contest finalists will also see their underlying content expand with time, but Datamasher will get geometrically (exponentially?!) more interesting as the number of datasets available for mashing increases, making possible new and intriguing indicators! The data sets which are now available for mashing on Datamasher are shown here.

5. Datamasher let's you compare yourself to your neighbors! Admit it - everyone loves to compare their home state to its neighboring states. For me, that means great satisfaction comparing the wonders of my home-town Wisconsin to our less-fortunate neighbors in Illinois. Datamasher promises hours of such entertainment, such as "Healthy States for Teens" or "Hospitals per Person".

4. Datamasher let's you explore State data in meaningful, un-mashed ways. You can use Datamasher as an easy way to browse and understand various State-by-State data sets - such as "Number of Deaths Due to Suicide per 100k"

3. Datamasher is full of lots of open-source goodness. When we code at Forum One it's all open source, and our tech team put their open-source hearts into Datamasher.

2. The friendly Carolina vocals of Joe Pringle's handy-dandy introductory video about how to use Datamasher, making it so easy to understand.

And, finally...

1. It's fun! We've had people create about 90 indicators in the past 24 hours alone - and we have not even started our social marketing juggernaut! It is fun to play around with the data and see what others are doing - and that's the whole point of Datamasher. Sure, you can create some goofy and nonsensical indicators with Datamasher (er, what means "Total Political Contributions to Republicans divided by SAT Scores") but some of the indicators are pretty interesting and meaningful, such as Political Party Contributions Ratios


The other contest finalists are really great and worth checking out - hats off to Govpulse - a Federal Register "browser", and ThisWeKnow, an "EveryBlock" for Federal data.

But after you've seen them and decided that Datamasher is really deserving of your vote (!), click here to create a (free) account on the Sunlight site, and then here to place your (single) vote.

Thanks!