Re: [projectvrm] UK gov launches "midata" data giveback program

[Doc Searls < >]

Yes, very much like we get now from our credit card companies: a table of 
all-caps items, each filled with alphanumeric arcana, some of which might 
resolve into a gas station or a restaurant, and some of which will bear the 
unfamiliar true names of companies with maybe-familiar names that we spent 
money with.

A useful project indeed. :-)

Doc

On Nov 6, 2011, at 11:36 PM, Brian Behlendorf wrote:

> I suspect that the first stage of midata will result in data dumps from 
> companies without much metadata. Your Tesco data dump, for instance, is 
> likely to look very much like a compilation of all your receipts from the 
> Tesco cash register. A glance at a typical receipt these days will show a 
> ton of fairly inscrutable terms and numbers, from which you might clearly 
> make out the total and date of transaction, but might struggle to figure 
> out what it was that you actually bought. I suspect a secondary set of 
> services will evolve... will need to evolve... that help parse all that 
> into something more semantically meaningful. That parse algorithm should be 
> common property, a la wikipedia, so that they can be more quickly built and 
> continually tuned, and so post-parse data could be shared between PDS's.  
> Perhaps this is a useful project for the Customer Commons.
> 
> Brian
>