The IT industry is ahead of the curve on this one. Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail have been opening their data for days now...
Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#12Mint.
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?
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#13Google. :D
That's like your third wish being asking the fairy for another three. You cheat, sir!
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#14Real Estate, hands down. The MLS should be more open.
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#15Insurance 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?
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#16In 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
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#17Financial 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.
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#18In 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
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...
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#19Real Estate, hands down. The MLS should be more open.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?
#20IMDB! With a powerful API please.
IMDB is open for non-commercial use.
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.imdb.com/pub/