Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What company/industry would you like to see open their data?

9 pointsrokhayakebe26 comments

In the UK, postcodes - unlike US ZIP codes, they're not free

Retail product data - books, movies, music, games, electronics, etc: you can kinda do this through affiliate programs, but it's not great

Drug companies - studies can be killed if the data looks bad; we should be able to see every study, completed or not, and all the associated data so we can do comparative analyses

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/UK_government_database_of_all_1,84...

This isn't the full postcode database. The full postcode database maps postcodes to actual addresses instead of co-ordinates. You could map these coordinates to addresses but you'd need Ordnance Survey data which you've also got to pay for.

Great... except you can't use the information legally and it will not be kept up-to-date which makes it useless

I can't believe we have to pay for the postcode data in the UK. It should be freely available

Why isn't it legal to use?

Even if I download and read a book illegally, I'm still allowed to post quotes from the book on my blog. I'm still allowed to know the material. Why is this list any different?

An open UPC/EAN database would be great. Currently you are forced to use Amazon but are restricted to their TOS (no mobile apps being a big thing) or the UPCDatabase which is VERY small (but a valiant effort).

The sad thing is that I can see no commercial reason NOT to open the database. People already pay a small fee for obtaining a legitimate EAN/UPC code.

Not open, but an otherwise "free" and official place to get some info regarding a barcode... http://gepir.gs1.org/V31/xx/gtin.aspx?Lang=en-US

RE: Drug companies - I imagine that this would be great data to have for the scientific community. But I am sure this would cause many patent issues for the industry...

Mint.

What do people invest in? How do they spend their money? How do they lose their money? I'd love to see the kinds of insights that could be gleamed from it. Of course the data will have caveats but I could see reports like: 90% of mint users who own apple stock also buy apple product or maybe 90% of users who buy apple product short microsoft stock?

Insurance companies. I'd love to know how they weight different variables when determining the cost of policy (applies for health, car, home etc). If I install $100 worth of deadlocks, will that save me $5 / year or $50 / year on my policy? What other variables aren't I even thinking of improving?

Real Estate, hands down. The MLS should be more open.

As a vendor, I could not agree more. The politics surrounding each individual MLS is a nightmare, and every time there is a rule change for public display of MLS data, it comes in the form of a 50 page document that the agents don't read, they just sign without realizing how they constantly make life harder for themselves.

Openness of the MLS lies in the hands of the Agents, and they should be demanding free and open access to their listing data so they can sell more properties, but they just stick the the status quo.

Here's how it works. Agents PAY their local MLS's to take THEIR DATA, then the MLS charges THEM to be able to take it back and use it.

It's the most absurd system I've ever seen.

Food. I want to know what's in every packet, and what else is made in the factory. If you're gluten intolerant, it matters that flour is used on another process line in the factory that makes the chocolates that themselves have no wheat, oats, barley or rye.

If I had access to the complete ingredients list for every food item, I could buy treats for my best friend's son without wondering whether it will send him into anaphylactic shock.

Never mind business opportunities - this data could save lives and prevent misery on a daily basis.

Financial institutions. While you could certainly argue that they already open up their data by way of regulatory reporting, I think there is certainly a case for standardizing output and possibly even increasing the scope.

Amazon. One can see sales trends of every book, cd, dvd, clothing, and electronics store across the world. This would be amazing.

Come to think of it, does anyone know if Amazon doesn't turn around and sell sales data back to competing manufacturers? This data would be a huge benefit in terms of where to focus advertising money and bundling efforts.

The IT industry is ahead of the curve on this one. Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail have been opening their data for days now...

IMDB! With a powerful API please.

IMDB is open for non-commercial use.

ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.imdb.com/pub/

AT&T

I'm sure they have plenty of data from their cooperation with the NSA.

The security theatre industry.

The US government.

We're making progress, but there's a long way to go.

Google. :D

That's like your third wish being asking the fairy for another three. You cheat, sir!

The military.

public transportation in Belgium

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