Mapufacture Puts Kiva Loans On A Map
Not too long ago I wrote about a Semantic Web idea of using GeoRSS and Geonames to enhance Kiva.ORG’s user interface. Mikel Maron wrote me today, and told me that he has put up a map of Kiva loan applications using the technologies that I’ve described.
The map application takes an RSS feed of Kiva’s loan applications and augments the content with geographical coordinates information using the Geonames’s RSS to GeoRSS Converter service. The resulting geocoded RSS feed is then fed to Mapufacture.
This is what Mikel has to say about his little experiment:
The result is ok, good geocoding, and very easy to put together .. the major issue being that multiple loan requests are placed on the same location (there are several Tanzania loans). This is more an issue with GeoRSS display in mapufacture (something we’re busy working on improving).
This may be good enough to approach Kiva, to demonstrate the potential for deeper mapping integration in their site. Want to try?
Go visit: http://mapufacture.com/georss/map/show/146
I’m very impressed with Geonames’s services. The RSS to GeoRSS Converter services is a simple idea, but it’s a powerful one. I think it’s the kind of services that we need for the Semantic Web.
Users and webmasters publish their data on the Web without thinking about semantics (e.g., Kiva publishes loan applications in RSS). Semantic augmentation services like Geonames’s RSS to GeoRSS Converter will be used by web services such as Mapufacture to discover hidden semantics from the original data source (e.g., it discovers geographical coordinates from text strings of geographical names).
IMHO, this 1-2-3 approach solves part of the Semantic Web problem that Peter Norvig has described.
[...] Seen on the Geospatial Semantic Web Blog… [...]
Pingback by GeoRSS blog » Mapping Kiva Loans via Mapufacture — July 24, 2006 @ 8:58 am
Thank you Harry, excellent point.
Inherent semantic information can be extracted by specialized services like geonames and help internet users find the information relevant to them.
As soon as the GeoRSS standard supports more geographic information than just latitude and longitude, geonames will add more information like country code and place name. Feed aggregators like mapufacture can use this information to help the reader organize, filter, prioritize,group and search feeds according to geographical criteria. The geonames RSS to GeoRSS Converter is a natural language processor and I am sure Peter Norvig had this in mind. Judging from his Amazon books reviews he seems to be highly interested in this topic.
Comment by marc — July 28, 2006 @ 12:25 pm
[...] A couple weeks ago, Harry at the excellent Geospatial Semantic Web Blog posted on GeoRSS and Geonames for Philanthropy. His suggestion to use Geonames to produce GeoRSS for Kiva was a good one. And a simple one. Chained together with mapufacture, this was a one minute job to produce a map of Kiva loans, an approach generally useful for the Semantic Web. From such an easy demonstration, Kiva is now thinking about how to integrate mapping more directly in their site. [...]
Pingback by Brain Off » Maps that Matter — August 7, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
Would like to learn more about KIVA and if its
in Cameroon & Ethiopia as I will be going there
in Feb. 07.
Comment by John Raforth — October 31, 2006 @ 10:12 pm
Hi,
I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day
Comment by Florian — January 28, 2007 @ 7:08 pm