Location data provider GeoIQ today detailed a new offering called GeoIQ Social. This is a real-time streaming API that delivers location-enabled data from Twitter, Pachube-enabled sensor hardware and other platforms into a map-friendly output format that can be updated as the data changes. Boom!
Sentiment analysis, user ranking, data from sensors and potentially much more can all be taken into account in requesting data from the API. Connectors have been built for “all sorts of databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, HBase, and MongoDB as well as an even newer types of databases and APIs like Google Fusion Tables.” Awesome.
The company concludes its discussion of the new API by saying it intends to extend far beyond where it is today in dynamic data and dynamic mapping. “Without giving it all away,” writes Chris Helm, Head of Analytics at GeoIQ, “we’re thinking along the lines of realtime analytics, dynamic event alerting and more tools for easy collaboration.”
That sounds fabulous to me. When physical place and the real-time social web come together in the form of streaming data APIs, the possibilities for augmenting time, place, civil society and the meaning of the web are substantial.
