Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868437

by rokhayakebe • 17 years ago

9 26 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?

mahmud• 17 years ago

The military.

panic• 17 years ago

Google. :D

wlievens• 17 years ago

That's like your third wish being asking the fairy for another three. You cheat, sir!

matt-kantor• 17 years ago

The US government.

We're making progress, but there's a long way to go.

codexon• 17 years ago

AT&T

I'm sure they have plenty of data from their cooperation with the NSA.

sachinag• 17 years ago

In the UK, postcodes - unlike US ZIP codes, they're not free

Retail product data - books, movies, music, games, electronics, etc: you can kinda do this through affiliate programs, but it's not great

Drug companies - studies can be killed if the data looks bad; we should be able to see every study, completed or not, and all the associated data so we can do comparative analyses

DarkShikari• 17 years ago

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/UK_government_database_of_all_1,84...

smiler• 17 years ago

Great... except you can't use the information legally and it will not be kept up-to-date which makes it useless

I can't believe we have to pay for the postcode data in the UK. It should be freely available

kierank• 17 years ago

This isn't the full postcode database. The full postcode database maps postcodes to actual addresses instead of co-ordinates. You could map these coordinates to addresses but you'd need Ordnance Survey data which you've also got to pay for.

pplante• 17 years ago

RE: Drug companies - I imagine that this would be great data to have for the scientific community. But I am sure this would cause many patent issues for the industry...

dazzawazza• 17 years ago

An open UPC/EAN database would be great. Currently you are forced to use Amazon but are restricted to their TOS (no mobile apps being a big thing) or the UPCDatabase which is VERY small (but a valiant effort).

The sad thing is that I can see no commercial reason NOT to open the database. People already pay a small fee for obtaining a legitimate EAN/UPC code.

hypest• 17 years ago

Not open, but an otherwise "free" and official place to get some info regarding a barcode... http://gepir.gs1.org/V31/xx/gtin.aspx?Lang=en-US

Janteh• 17 years ago

IMDB! With a powerful API please.

fizx• 17 years ago

IMDB is open for non-commercial use.

ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.imdb.com/pub/

brg2• 17 years ago

Amazon. One can see sales trends of every book, cd, dvd, clothing, and electronics store across the world. This would be amazing.

brg2• 17 years ago

Come to think of it, does anyone know if Amazon doesn't turn around and sell sales data back to competing manufacturers? This data would be a huge benefit in terms of where to focus advertising money and bundling efforts.

rickdangerous1• 17 years ago

The IT industry is ahead of the curve on this one. Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail have been opening their data for days now...

joez• 17 years ago

Mint.

What do people invest in? How do they spend their money? How do they lose their money? I'd love to see the kinds of insights that could be gleamed from it. Of course the data will have caveats but I could see reports like: 90% of mint users who own apple stock also buy apple product or maybe 90% of users who buy apple product short microsoft stock?

fretlessjazz• 17 years ago

Real Estate, hands down. The MLS should be more open.

dpcan• 17 years ago

As a vendor, I could not agree more. The politics surrounding each individual MLS is a nightmare, and every time there is a rule change for public display of MLS data, it comes in the form of a 50 page document that the agents don't read, they just sign without realizing how they constantly make life harder for themselves.

Openness of the MLS lies in the hands of the Agents, and they should be demanding free and open access to their listing data so they can sell more properties, but they just stick the the status quo.

Here's how it works. Agents PAY their local MLS's to take THEIR DATA, then the MLS charges THEM to be able to take it back and use it.

It's the most absurd system I've ever seen.

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

Insurance companies. I'd love to know how they weight different variables when determining the cost of policy (applies for health, car, home etc). If I install $100 worth of deadlocks, will that save me $5 / year or $50 / year on my policy? What other variables aren't I even thinking of improving?

pmjoyce• 17 years ago

Financial institutions. While you could certainly argue that they already open up their data by way of regulatory reporting, I think there is certainly a case for standardizing output and possibly even increasing the scope.

SePP• 17 years ago

public transportation in Belgium

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Food. I want to know what's in every packet, and what else is made in the factory. If you're gluten intolerant, it matters that flour is used on another process line in the factory that makes the chocolates that themselves have no wheat, oats, barley or rye.

If I had access to the complete ingredients list for every food item, I could buy treats for my best friend's son without wondering whether it will send him into anaphylactic shock.

Never mind business opportunities - this data could save lives and prevent misery on a daily basis.

elmindreda• 17 years ago

The security theatre industry.