Mashup Success: Untapped Legacy Data Streams

location based services

Public CIO offers its take on the fellow behind Expedia (the travel service) and Zillow.com (the real estate property estimating service built against Virtual Earth), Richard Barton. Paul W. Taylor argues that in both cases Barton identified "untapped legacy data streams" and knit them together.He goes on to note:
To be sure, it is a fool's errand to ignore this promising trend. Google Earth (or MSN Virtual Earth) is democratizing sophisticated mapping information, including those based on public GIS records.The main point Taylor makes (he is chief strategy officer of the Center for Digital Government, the former deputy state CIO of Washington) is that government needs to look carefully at this way of looking at the world. Update: How this for collecting legacy data? Collect all that frequest flier info in one place? (via Wired blog MonkeyBites reporting on Mashup Camp 2