You know that tiny little corner of Mayor Bloomberg’s office occupied by those primarily concerned with making the future of New York City totally futuristic (better known as NYC Digital)? They’re at it again!
Yesterday, NYC Digital launched their NYC Open Data site on Tumblr, which is basically a bunch of datasets obtained by the city, and posted on the internet for anyone to play with the API.
The NYC Open Data Tumblr aims its sights on those who wouldn’t normally sift through said data sets, and post them to Tumblr in hopes of provoking interest among the whisperyblogging set, or ideally, the results of opening up their API to everyone, which has the potential to yield some amazing stuff. In the mean time: Greenmarkets! Firehouses! Park locations! Baby names! And so on. Per the Tumblr:
As part of Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment to transparency and innovation, over 800 (and counting!) City datasets are now online for anyone in New York or around the world to explore and access via an API, for deeper, real-time integration into apps and websites.
Nerdy! Service-y! And so on. Even more compelling is the recently-launched NYC Food Recipes Tumblr, which—note of criticism—is being sorely underused. It could be the digital epicenter of the most underground ethnic food recipes from some of the best ethnic neighborhoods in the country, and yet: Low Fat Pumpkin Cupcakes? Where are the dumpling recipes of Flushing, the jerk chicken secrets of Crown Heights, and the best Bulgolgi in Bedford Park? This thing could be so much cooler. If we wanted boring recipes for boring muffins, we could go pretty much anywhere else on the internet—let alone, the world—to find them. Just because a municipality is spending cash on digital infrastructure doesn’t mean it has to be as boring as the bureaucrats who run it. Just sayin’.
