And you are here why?

Ok, only if your city is London, Paris, or Berlin, but still! This comes to you via WatchDogs , a game (not yet out) by UbiSoft , where, apparently, your character gets to control Chicago via some sort of centralized data-access mechanism. Anyhow, as a teaser, the folks at UbiSoft have created a 3-D interactive map of London, Paris, and Berlin, and you get to check it out. Its quite neat actually, go take a look ! (The above is just a screen-cap.   Go to the original ...)

As members of our society, we generate a ton of data.  Some of this ends up as governmental  (tax information, census), some of it ends up as administrative  (land records, traffic accidents...  yes, a fine distinction, but still a relevant one), and some of it is, well, just data (rainfall). Over the last few years or so, there have been a number of attempts to make this data public - typically under some form of open data  initiative. The general idea, of course, is that once people can start messing with this data, they can come up with all sorts of relevant and fun uses.  For an example, check out what the good people in California have done , and in particularly, the remarkably cool Explore California mashup ...  While their heart may be in the right place, politics usually ends up causing chaos - and when I say politics , I actually mean national security .  You'd be surprised at how much stuff is considered 'dangerous'. Rai...