Datamob: "Public data put to good use"

Datamob "aims to show, in a very simple way, how public data sources are being used":

Our listings emphasize the connection between data posted by governments and public institutions and the interfaces people are building to explore that data.

It's for anyone who's ever looked at a site like MAPLight.org and wondered, "Where did they get their data?" And for anyone who ever looked at THOMAS and thought, "There's got to be a better way to organize this!"

The creators, Sean Flannagan and Lauren Sperber, say they have two broad goals:

• Encourage governments and public institutions to make more data available in developer-friendly formats like CSV, XML and RDF. Widely accessible public data enables informed civic engagement, and we believe that providing restriction-free data to developers is the best way to promote the technological innovations that will spread knowledge.
• Illuminate the process of creating interfaces, mashups and visualizations for public data, and inspire people to create new ones.

And this is how Sperber explains the name:

Well, the folks at Freebase coined the term "data mob" to describe a group of data-lovers working together to perfect a small portion of Freebase's ambitiously all-encompassing database. As for our Datamob, we hope it'll inspire more institutions with vast reserves of information to put their data out there in accessible formats—and bring together more data mobbers to bring that information to life.

[via]