RDTN

http://RDTN.org - a collective voice helping others stay informed

Radiation info from Japan and beyond aggregated from a number of sources, displayed via map, soon to be KML feed.

48 hours after design, 72 hours from original sketch

1) made assumptions 2) built a trust network 3) launched early, iterated often

Assumptions

1) people will buy geiger counters 2) people will trust us 3) radiation units are simple 4) people will undersrtand info on sute 5) no one else to solve same problem 6) they are qualified to do this

http://pachube.com (one source for data) - api to query data

Much of the data is scraped from govt or other sources that make it available in difficult to use formats (e.g. daily PDF outputs, or screen dumps). EPA is guilty of having an interface for accessing the data that is relatively useless for App developers. Data.gov doesn't help - almost makes the situation worse by raising expectations (showcases the data on the front page, promises downloadable data, and feeds, but really all the links lead back to the same frustrating EPA interface).

At least one interesting example (from Germany) of a contributing source using crowd-sourcing not to contribute original data, but to transform (scrape) it into usable form...