idealist.org

Mash Up Data for Good—and Cash

Photo by food_in_mouth
Mashups are all the rage on the web these days, and Netsquared, a project of TechSoup, wants nonprofits to join in on the fun. Entries for the Netsquared Mashup Challenge are due on March 14, and if you have a winning idea for a mashup, it could earn you a share of $100,000.

What's a mashup, you ask? Wikipedia has a great explanation, but it's probably easiest to show a couple of examples:

HousingMaps: While Craigslist is great for finding an apartment, wouldn't it be even better if you could see the listings all on one map? The folks at HousingMaps thought so too, so they mashed up Craigslist apartment data and Google Maps location data. The results are very useful for apartment hunters!

ChicagoCrime.org: ChicagoCrime takes crime data from the Chicago Police Department and organizes it by zip code and neighborhood, letting users easily view crimes near them. ChicagoCrime's mashup was so successful that they've started mashing up every piece of data they can find in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, creating a new website called EveryBlock.

If you have an idea about how data can be mashed up for a good cause, submit it! Netsquared will pair winning ideas with technical people and money to make the mashup happen.