April 2012 Summaries

The Public Laboratory developed balloon mapping kit, which is used for making maps and aerial images at low cost and with ease. They started using it to map the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and are now working on civic and environmental issues. At EcoHackNYC, they experimented with new sensors for Air Quality monitoring that transmit real-time data to the ground, adding them to a balloon and learning how to use stabilizers. A new test is planned in NYC to showcase the results of this exciting project.

The NYC BigApps3.0 competition, a city-run contest that encourages developers to play with government data, recently held its award ceremony in New York City. Ninety-six apps were submitted, four of which used CartoDB, including Scene Near Me, which was awarded second place in the Popular Choice Award. Scene Near Me is an example of how CartoDB can help store and query geospatial data in real-time, using NYC Open Data initiative's public film locations data. Another notable app, Taxono.my, developed by Alastair Coote, uses CartoDB to store and query street intersections for any address in the city. The competition provides access to over 700 city data sets, with several projects partnering with CartoDB as a partner API.

The Open Government Partnership conference in Brasilia, Brasil is a two-day event that will bring together representatives from over 60 countries to discuss the latest reforms and innovations in open government. The partnership has grown rapidly, with eight countries launching it last September and 43 additional governments joining in the past months. Vizzuality will be presenting several projects, including the Open Government Experience Locator developed on CartoDB, which allows users to explore different implementation experiences from around the world. Ruth del Campo will also be showcasing how CartoDB can help create maps with data quickly and easily, especially in the field of open government where open data is crucial.

We are happy to announce that CartoDB 1.0 is now live, offering improvements to performance, a new look and feel, additional features, and enhanced data delivery capabilities. The platform provides access to a vast world of data from OpenStreetMaps and introduces new thematic mapping options. With the release of v1.0, all new tables on free accounts are public, while users with premium plans can create private tables. Existing users can upgrade to premium plans directly from their settings menu, which includes new resources and private table capabilities.