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Mayor Emanuel Announces Chicago’s Participation in New Google Developer Challenge


Mayor Urges Local Developers to Set the Bar and Showcase Chicago’s Innovation

CHICAGO–(ENEWSPF)–August 1, 2012.  Mayor Emanuel today announced Chicago’s participation in the first Google PlacesApplication Programming Interface (API) Developer Challenge, designed to help communities and governments run better by making public information more accessible and useful through technology. Chicago leads the nation with one of the most robust public data portals –data.cityofchicago.org – featuring more than 350 datasets empowering developers to build innovative web and mobile applications leveraging public data. This challenge calls on developers to use the Google Places API and the City’s Open Data Portal to create applications that will help residents and visitors to better experience Chicago.

 “Any time there is an opportunity for the City of Chicago to take part in something that leverages open data to empower Chicago residents and spur innovation, we are eager to be a part of it,” said Mayor Emanuel. “Chicago’s vibrant technology and startup culture will no doubt leverage this wealth of open, public data and rise to the challenge.”

The Google Challenge invites developers, designers and technologists to improve communities and governments using the Google Places API paired with local data.  Google provides this tool to help developers access its comprehensive database and make associations between data and places, making it easier to build applications on services like Google Maps. 

“One of the things that make the Google Places API Developer Challenge great for Chicago is that so much of our open data is largely place-based,” said Chief Technology Officer John Tolva. “I’m really looking forward to what our tech and developer community comes up with and I am confident their efforts will only reinforce why Chicago has become a major hub for digital innovation.”

The application submissions period will begin on August 15, 2012, and continue through the end of October. The subsequent one-month judging period will be followed by announcements of the winning applications in mid-December.

Please visit developers.google.com/challenge for more information.

Source: cityofchicago.org


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