Data Australia

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Australian data application for iPhone

Data Australia is an iPhone application capable of displaying various datasets in a simple, portable and interactive way. It makes use of datasets published by the various State Libraries of Australia and the data.gov.au initiative.
Data Australia is Cyril Doussin's entry in the Libraryhack 2011 competition.



Video



Please note this video does not feature the Augmented Reality view, as this can not be recorded on a computer. See below for a screenshot.

Features

Map


Data Australia opens up with an interactive Google Map centered on your current location, and pinpoints places around you for which a Wikipedia article exists.
This is ideal to discover your surroundings and places of interests, if you are a tourist for example.

 
 



Data from anywhere in Australia


The map and the data displayed is not limited to your current location. Move the map around, pull down the actions menu and hit the "More" button to load up new points of interest around the center of the map.
This means that I can look up data for any part of Australia, no matter where I am currently situated.





Choose what you want to see


The Edit button allows you to specify which dataset you would like to see on the Map. The currently available datasets are:
Wikipedia articles
  • The Queensland State Library pictures dataset
  • The South Australia State Library pictures dataset
  • The list of Queensland Public Libraries dataset
  • The list of Victoria Public Libraries dataset
  • The list of Western Australia Public Libraries dataset
  • The national Public Toilets dataset


 
 
 
 



Detailed view



Tapping the disclosure button on any point of interest reveals the detailed view for this item, for example the full Wikipedia article, or a slideshow of the pictures from the State Libraries of Queensland or South Australia, letting the user flick through and zoom on the photographs.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



The Augmented Reality view



Any place pinpointed on the map can be loaded up in an augmented reality view: the location of the place is overlaid on top of the phone's live camera view, allowing the user to find out in which direction the point of interest is. This is extremely useful when getting to a library, or trying to find a particular building in the city.





View places as a list


Data Australia lets you view the points of interest as a list, which can be more practical when browsing through many items.





Suburbs by State

Data Australia lets you browse the complete list of Australian suburbs, organized by state.

 
 




Suburb boundaries


Data Australia makes use of the API provided by last year's Libraryhack winner: Suburban Trends, and displays the boundaries of any suburb on the map.





Coming soon...


Data Australia is still in development and the following features are planned for the near future:
  • Other national datasets such as Centrelink and Medicare offices, My School data, National Library of Australia Sheet Music collection and many others.
  • Tours which take the user on a journey through Australia, centered around a particular topic
  • Integration of data from Suburban Trends to display socio-economic statistics about any suburb
  • Timeline view for historical datasets
  • More

Future


We are making Data Australia a simple, fast and flexible way of accessing multiple public datasets about Australia, from anywhere, at anytime.
Data Australia will be available publicly in the coming weeks.
If you have an idea you would like to see implemented in the application, feel free to give me a shout: cdoussin@gmail.com