Since Obama has taken over the White House, there has been a significant emphasis on open and transparent government. Some people claim that Obama hasn't gone far enough in opening up government information, I've seen drastic changes in the way the government is exposing data to the public, Such as Data.gov and Recovery.gov. There are also some serious initiatives through the tech community to develop their own tools to help government become more transparent. There are a variety of Tools available, such as the Sunlight Foundations new Transparency Corps and Stimulus Watch which are providing valuable services, and building up an open government infrastructure. Many of these tools are used to show in depth views of particular Bills or government projects. One example of this comes from aGeoCommons community member, Joseph Hirl from Agilis Advisory, who made this map to show how members of the House voted on Bill HR 2454, American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009. We really are seeing a change in the way government information is presented to the public, and the public's role in voicing their opinions on that information. If there are any other government transparency tools or websites out there we are forgetting, feel free to mention them in the comments.

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With the passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett this past week, we wanted to pay tribute the best way we knew how; with a map. This map shows an index of Google searches for the late celebrities, the higher the number the more searches from that state. Interestingly enough, Searches for Michael Jackson seem to be coming from the most heavily populated states, but Farrah Fawcetts’ fans seem to be located in the southern states. Click the eyeball icon to turn layers on and off:

I’ll leave you with my favorite Michael Jackson video, Enjoy!

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For anyone who hasn’t heard about Kiva, Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. They have developed a system of micro-lending, allowing anyone to lend small amounts of money to people in need, the money is paid back, and everyone is happy. Its truely a great idea to help those in need, i was curious about trying to highlight or quantify whether or not Kiva was working in the right direction and getting money to those in need so i created this quick little mashup of the featured entrepreneurs from Kiva and Global Poverty Data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). I hope both Kiva and the UNDP continue their good work!

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The Iranian election is clearly the hot topic in the news today, but its also showing the power of social media and the openness of the internet and web based tools once again. Even major mainstream news media outlets such as CNN are relying on Twitter and Facebook to help get information across the borders after Iranian officials shut down access to newspapers and internet. To follow the newsfeeds on Twitter search for the #IranElection tag which will keep up aware of everything as its happening. other interesting conversations are going on about the validity of the election.

We’ve added a map into the social media mix showing the ‘official election results‘ from the Iranian Interior Ministry, will be interested to see where the results change after a possible recount.

make your own maps with this and related election data here. This includes vote counts for the other officials, not to mention the number of valid and invalid votes per district.

If anyone has any data that they would like to see mapped, leave a link in the comments section and we’ll do the work for you, to help get the word out.

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