Making your own map just got a lot easier with Data Observatory

By now, CartoDB has created a lot of maps. The Bushwick-based company makes software that allows users to create their own interactive maps much easier than any other software has, and has become a go-to source for mapmaking.
With all those maps comes a lot of data users input for their maps. Tons of data. And a lot of it is the same data for the same places (like Brooklyn!). So CartoDB decided to make everyone’s life a bit easier and basically open source some frequently used data for general use on the platform. The company announced yesterday the Data Observatory.
What Data Observatory allows is if you’d been looking up data sets, trying to find the best home-price data or demographics for Park Slope, well, now you can just use CartoDB’s data (all of which has been chosen for its accuracy).
“Most data services today have been designed like a shelf of books,” the company said in its announcement. “The Data Observatory acts more like a librarian, providing you tools and answers that meet your needs.”

So excited about the Data Observatory. Only the beginning and so many cool pieces already https://t.co/spZf27Wgkr pic.twitter.com/5wsJ987srv

— Andrew Hill (@andrewxhill) May 18, 2016

Not bad. This will lower the barriers to entry even more for amateur cartographers trying to map and figure out the world around them.
“CartoDB is really all about extracting value from location data,” according to the company. “Often, value comes from visualizing data on a map, but we find that the greatest value can come from exploring the underlying patterns within your data.”
Data Observatory is available now for enterprise (paid) accounts, but if you’re an individual user and interested, they might be able to help you out if you shoot them an email.