I love getting my fruit and veggies from my local Farmer’ Market. Unfortunately, as a recent SF transplant I wasn’t sure how to find my local Farmers’ Market. A quick search led me to a USDA website which seemed to contain most of the markets in the country.

Being an open data geek, I looked for an API. Finding none, I decided to make one. To do this, I:

1. Used the “Export to Excel” function to download the whole dataset.
2. Cleaned it up in Google Refine; normalized some fields, geocoded some records, added a geojson fields.
3. Uploaded it to a free couchdb instance.
4. Added the open source geocouch-utils CouchApp (which gives you a nice map out of the box).

All of this was done in about an hour and at a cost of $0.

Why spend thousands or even hundreds or thousands of dollars on a closed source application when you can get a comparable open source app for free? Even if you need commercial support, many open source programs now offer paid support that costs much less than the alternatives.

For this list, we looked for quality, open source alternatives to software that has a reputation for being expensive. Whenever possible, we included MSRPs for the expensive software, though in some cases, the pricing scheme is so complicated that it's nearly impossible to pin down.

The debt limit bill that just passed the House creates a powerful new joint committee (the "Super Congress")... ...this deal gives 12 Members of Congress what even the Speaker and the Majority leader don't have: a direct path to a vote on the floor.

That's enormously powerful. And as the joint committee decides where the $1.5 trillion dollar axe will fall, you can bet that a carnival of fundraising and lobbying will accompany their negotiations. If this committee isn't transparent, it'll be a failure of public policy, and a black eye on Congress.

Fireside21, a web services company fingered as a possible culprit behind the mass outage of congressional sites in the wake of Monday's televised presidential address, received over $1.4 million from House offices for web services last year, disbursement data shows. The total highlights the dominance of just a few companies providing congressional web services, a category in which five companies received 79 percent of the $5.5 million pie.

Sunlight Health helps you make more informed health care choices by putting trusted information from multiple sources at your fingertips. Use Sunlight Health to learn about hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis clinics, health care suppliers and prescription drugs.

Sunlight Health lets you learn about options in your area, and gives you information you can use in consultation with your physician or health care provider.

Jennifer Pahlka — founder of one of Civic Commons’ founding partners, Code for America — gave a talk at the Future of Web Apps conference in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, entitled “The Next Disruption: The Opportunity for Civic Startups.” The keynote, embedded below, outlined how there is a huge opportunity in the government and civic space that is ripe for new businesses and technology:

..."that we almost have an IT cartel within federal IT" that's made up of "very few companies" that benefit from government spending "because they understand the procurement process better than anyone else."

"It's not because they provide better technology," Kundra said of the contractors.

You might have started noticing hashtags (like the ones seen on Twitter) and acronyms are frequently popping up in Facebook streams, news articles and social commentary - IMHO (in my humble opinion). While useful in getting directly to the point and adding a bit of taxonomy, hashtags and acronyms can be confusing to the uninitiated.

Departing from my usual posts on the latest tools, I'd like to instead run down some of the more common tags, terms and acronyms used on the web. After all, in order to use web tools effectively, you have to be able to speak to (and understand) your audience. This primer should help you out.

Click here to jump to acronyms for the web, here to decipher government abbreviations, and here to get the scoop on hashtag use.

General acronyms

Commonly spotted on Twitter

• RT - retweet, quoting someone else's tweet
• MT - modified tweet, paraphrasing someone else's tweet, usually so it can fit into 140 characters with your commentary
• HT - hat tip
• CC - think email lingo: carbon-copy
• IRL - in real life (meaning, not on the internets)
• OH - overheard
• +1 - "me, too" or "upvote"

Chatty

• TL;DR - too long didn't read
• FWIW - for what it's worth
• FTFY - fixed that for you
• ROFL - rolling on the floor laughing
• LMAO - laughing my a$$ off
• IMO- in my opinion
• IMHO - in my humble opinion
• IMAO - in my arrogant opinion
• JK - just kidding
• ITAP - I took a picture
• TIL - today I learned
• DAE - does anybody else?
• YSK - you should know
• AFAIK - as far as I know
• FTW - for the win
• IIRC - if I remember correctly
• OP - original poster
• ITT - in this thread
• BRB - be right back
• FYI - for your information
• IOU - I owe you
• THX - thanks
• NP - no problem
• WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get, helpful for understanding #opendata people talk about tools
• NSFW - not safe for work (ahem)
• TY - thank you
• YW - you're welcome
• FML - f**k my life...#fail
• BTW - by the way

Government specific acronyms

• OGD - Open Government Directive
• EO - Executive order
• PAC - Political Action Committee
• GAO - General Accounting Office
• GSA - General Services Administration
• OMB - Office of Management and Budget
• CRS - Congressional Research Service
• FOIA - Freedom of Information Act
• POIA - Public Online Information Act
• CIO vs CTO - Chief Information Officer - Chief Technology Officer
• GIS - Geographic Information System
• OSS/FOSS - Open Source Software
• TOS - Terms of Service

Check out this post by Digiphile and webacronyms.com if you're starving for more acronyms and abbrs.

Hashtags

Hashtags are used to categorize a topic, conversation or piece of content. How to tell the difference? Hashtags with general names (like "#opengov" or "#transparency") are used to link up your content with people interested in that subject or topic. Does your hashtag have a number or year associated with it (like "#tcamp11")? Or, does it abbreviate the name of an event (i.e. "PDF") or end in "chat" ("#foiachat")? If so, then that tag is being used to catalogue the conversations for a specific offline or online event, which you can join just by using the tag yourself.

Not all hashtags will fit neatly into these divisions, but all hashtags can be followed using Twitter, Google Alerts or tools like Social Mention.

Government specific hashtags

• #opengov - open government
• #tcot - top conservatives on Twitter
• #p2 - progressive politics
• #gov20 - government 2.0
• #egov - eGovernment
• #opendata - open data
• #localGov - local government
• #munigov - municipal government
• #transparency - transparency in government
• #sunlive - Sunlightlight Live
• #sunchat - Sunlight Twitter chat
• #tcamp11 - TransparencyCamp 2011
• #wegov - as in we are all a part of government
• #foiachat - Freedom of Information Act related chat
• #PDF - Personal Democracy Forum
• #ogw11 - Open Gov West

For more government related hashtags, click here.

These terms, tags and acronyms should be enough to get your started on your way.  Of course, this list is by no means comprehensive and you'll see these tags evolve over time. If you see any major omissions, please add them in the comments below.