Participants working at the 1.USA.gov Hack Day in San Diego.

A week ago, we held the first 1.USA.gov Hack Day, a nationwide event organized to encourage people to explore the data created by our URL shortening service 1.USA.gov.

Hack day events took place in Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, and San Diego. Over 120 people attended the events and explored ways to use 1.USA.gov data to help people find useful and interesting government information.

1.USA.gov automatically creates .gov URLs whenever you use bitly to shorten a URL that ends in .gov or .mil. We created this service to make it easy for people to know when a short URL will lead to official, and trustworthy, government information.

Data is created every time someone clicks on a 1.USA.gov link, which happens about 56,000 times each day. Together, these clicks show what government information people are sharing with their friends and networks. No one has ever had such a broad view of how government information is viewed and shared online.

Here are some examples of what Hack Day participants built with data from 1.USA.gov:

Find government links that are popular near you

Robert, a consultant and professor from San Diego State University, built a tool that lets you see which links were most popular in the past 24 hours near your city or within your country. Try it out and see what’s popular near you.

See where NASA is most popular

Adam Laiacano, an engineer who lives in Brooklyn, NY, analyzed 1.USA.gov data and found that 42% of all clicks on 1.USA.gov links go to NASA websites. He created a map that shows that people in Europe are more likely to only click on NASA links, while people in the United States click on links from a wider variety of government links. See Adam’s map on his blog.

Watch as government links are clicked all over the world

Helmut Hissen, a software engineer, made this animation that shows clicks on 1.USA.gov links from June 2 through July 14:

In the video, red flashes represent clicks from non-mobile devices, and green flashes represent clicks from mobile devices. Note that the final NASA Shuttle launch occurred on July 8. You can see a dramatic increase in activity at the 1:24 mark.

See which links are most popular right now

Barg Upender and Adam, software engineers in Washington, D.C., created a site called PopGov.us that shows which government links are popular in real time.

Create your own hacks

If you are interested in working with 1.USA.gov data, you can find everything you need to know, including links to code from the Hack Day and a full list of projects on the USA.gov Developer Resources page.

If you want to share your creation with us, leave a comment on this post or tweet about it using the hashtag #1USAgov.

In March, we announced a new URL shortening service called 1.USA.gov. 1.USA.gov automatically creates .gov URLs whenever you use bitly to shorten a URL that ends in .gov or .mil. We created this service to make it easy for people to know when a short URL will lead to official, and trustworthy, government information.

Data is created every time someone clicks on a 1.USA.gov link, which happens about 56,000 times each day. Together, these clicks show what government information people are sharing with their friends and networks. No one has ever had such a broad view of how government information is viewed and shared online.

Today, we’re excited to announce that all of the data created by 1.USA.gov clicks is freely available through the Developers page on USA.gov. We want as many people as possible to benefit from the insights we get from 1.USA.gov.

1.USA.gov Hack Day

To mark the occasion, we’re also planning a nationwide 1.USA.gov Hack Day on July 29.

The Hack Day will bring together software developers, entrepreneurs, and curious citizens to look at the data produced by 1.USA.gov and discover new uses for the information.

Hack day events will take place in San Diego, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.. Participation is free! We hope you will join us.

If you’d like to attend, please visit the pages our collaborators have set up for each event where you can find more information and RSVP:

• Washington, D.C. - Hosted by USA.gov
• San Diego - Hosted by Measured Voice
• New York City - Hosted by bitly
• San Francisco - Hosted by SimpleGeo

Of course, you don’t have to attend a physical event to share your 1.USA.gov ideas with the world. If you create something interesting with 1.USA.gov data that you’d like to share, leave a comment about it on this blog post, or tweet about it using the hashtag #1USAgov.

And, even if you’re not a developer, you can help us get the word out! Please share this post with anyone interested in showcasing what open government data can do!