Following along the lines of the previous post, I am highlighting the work of the The Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency, which created the Community Accounts site in collaboration with a number of partners. I love their tag line “Data -> Information -> Knowledge”. Check out their site for more info and to see data in action.

Community Accounts is an innovative information system providing users at all levels with a reliable source of community, regional, and provincial data. A public-wide, online data retrieval system for locating, sharing and exchanging information related to the province and its people, the Community Accounts provides users with a single comprehensive source of community, regional, and provincial data that would normally not be readily available, too costly to obtain, or too time consuming to retrieve and compile.

A good colleague and former SPNO member will be managing this excellent initiative come November. This is an excellent example of a data sharing initiative, similar to efforts already under way in Newfoundland.

A community embodies a wide range of characteristics. Nova Scotia Community Counts presents socio-economic and other data that illustrate the unique nature of each community. With easily accessible information, Community Counts also allows comparisons of community resources among regional, provincial, and national levels to present a more complete picture of Nova Scotian communities.

A number of articles appearing today citing Canada’s privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, raising concerns about Google’s Street View application. The privacy commissioner says many of the street-level images Google has on the Internet could break Canada’s privacy laws, although none are live yet in Canada. However, she goes on to say that if the Street View application were deployed in Canada, it might not comply with federal privacy legislation. Seems like the concept of private citizen is increasingly being eroded.

For more details, see articles:

The Globe & Mail

The National Post

The Google Earth people have quickly acquired a recent satellite photo of the May 4th tornado damage in Greensburg, Kansas. They have posted a KML file that allows you to see a before and after option which can be toggled in Google Earth. The damage was pretty extensive to say the least.

Via Google Earth Blog.

Google introduced a new feature to its Google Maps today, making mashups easier for even those with limited or no coding skills. The feature is called “My Maps” and it lets anyone create mashups by essentially pointing, clicking, dragging and dropping. You can choose to make the resulting map private or public. There were also tools that allow you to draw on the map and outline areas, as well as the ability to add your own text, photos and videos.

Here is a mashup I made of SPNO locations

SPNO Locations