Help Select the Most Promising Applications of Open Data

"Amid all of the submissions," writes Emily Badger, "are some familiar innovations we've already encountered at Atlantic Cities, formerly as nascent ideas now competing for a chance to scale up: our favorite guerrilla wayfinding campaign from Raleigh, North Carolina; Code for America's playful StreetMix web app; the San Francisco-based Urban Prototyping Festival; and a community-driven transportation planning project based on the kind of data analytics we wrote about here."

"But that's barely scratching the surface of all the proposals that Knight has corralled," she adds. "We've put together a list of 12 ideas from the competition that are new to us and that we think would be worth developing (and we've included the applicants' description of their programs). Through Friday, you can comment on (or "applaud") any of the submissions as applicants continue to refine their proposals.

Selected entries include apps that help parents choose a public school for their children, inform residents of the health and safety histories of their homes, and "a 'ballot in a box' tool that local governments, nonprofits, and citizen orgs can use to create ballots, hold elections, and see results in an accessible, trusted way."