Platinum Transparency

I know, I know, ...long hiatus... inconsistent... no excuses... apologies abound. Moving on.

From the majority of my posts about non-platinum activities, you would think I wasn't an optimist. Here's a great up and coming technology that many government agencies have come to use since President Obama's call for greater transparency, in particular with regards to the Recovery Act funds. Learn more by clicking on the demo video, or go straight into playing around with the live applications. The three listed are Recovery Act funds, HUD Recovery Data, and TARP data. The point of the software is not only to mash together seemingly incompatible data sources (whether it's RSS feeds, Excel spreadsheets, or what ever else one could imagine), but it also draws from these sources in real time, and displays the information in a concise and clear way. For example, all of the information in the Recovery Act live application tracks every dollar spent of the money given to federal agencies, states, and even bureaus with agencies. As another example, the TARP live application indicates what banks received money, how much, how they're faring, and their track records since receiving the money. Furthermore, you can embed these applications in iGoogle and the like. My buddy Shawn would certainly be able to explain it better than I can, but I do plan on incorporating the software in the way I do data research. I highly recommend downloading it and playing around with it if you work with data.