Open Air

UnLtdWorld ResearchLab

June 26th, 2008 Posted by: l.dewis

I was speaking to chief strategist Alberto at UnLtdWorld today about the upcoming release of their API for the ResearchLab. The Lab currently gives a pretty static view on their members data showing the interests, locations and services of the social entrepreneurs in their network but it’s about to get better.

UnLtdWorld say:

The UnLtdWorld Research Lab is the world’s first dynamic mapping and graphing of social entrepreneurship, and of social and environmental issues. The Research Lab will also operate as an open platform allowing any individual or organisation to access and use the metadata for external projects, and for partners to inform targeted applications that interact with relevant segments of the network, both on UnLtdWorld and beyond.

Alberto has been concentrating on data visualisation and making the data open for mash-ups so, for example, it’s easy to see the effect of project work on social issues in a particular location.

I suggested they connect with IssueLab who are also working to contextualise and communicate research into social issues. They are based in Chicago, home to one of the best known social issue data mashups of Google Maps with the Chicago crimes database - so you can search crime by neighbourhood, place, date and type.

So if you’re interested in communicating social issues/action keep an eye out next week for the new and improved ResearchLab.

Entry Filed under: Web 2.0, Innovation, Open Source