Ijanaagraha – What we have for developers
Crossposted from Janaagraha.
Three months back when I was introduced to iJanaagraha, by Jaagte Raho! Coordinator Jasmine Shah, I was struck by the amount of geographic and ward data that Bangalore based Not-for-profit Janaagraha wanted to publish. That was the time when Data.Gov was live and developers all around the world were going crazy. I was wondering at the potential of IJ as a developer platform and not just as a social network. It was time to stop wondering and start working towards it.
As you know the biggest inspiration for us was data.gov and data.gov.uk. where the government of US and UK share the raw government data for developers to use. Using data provided by the government, there has been mashups like flyOnTime, visualization of health records and many more interesting and helpful applications.
For example Janaagraha's Ward Infrastructure and Assessment (WISA) project has ranking data for each of the wards. Think about an application which maps WISA data to land/rent costs in that area. I guess it will be of great help when you want to choose your neighborhood. So it makes much sense to expose the data.
We are still in the early phase of developing the data and map APIs. As much as I want all kind of APIs exposed, I will have to keep check due to available resources. We will start with exposing OpenSocial and limited WISA data. That will probably serve as a pilot. If we find that developers are using the data in a useful way we could get the rest of the data and maps.
Above all IJ is social network which gives information, tools and network to socialites. It provides OpenSocial platform for external developers to launch relevant tools on IJ. Hence in a way, we are providing both a platform and data for interested developers to add those additional functionalities that we haven't even dreamnt of. Now I am just waiting for the launch.
-- Thejesh G N --
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Thejesh is the Technology and Community Manager at Janaagraha. He can be contacted at thej@janaagraha.org