A federal government commitment to open data — epitomized in a White House “datapalooza” last Friday — has catalyzed the development of apps and tools that can help enrich citizens’ lives and help keep them safer.

Earlier this week, the USDOT gave out $600 million in grants for innovative transportation projects across the country that address economic, environmental and travel issues at once. Not everyone was praising the TIGER program, with at least one critic blasting them as “anti-mobility grants.” It begs the question, though: did they actually read through the list of winners? Also, we launched a new interactive map of all TIGER grant winners from February and October.

Front Seat, the civic software company responsible for the massively popular Walkscore service, launched a new project today aimed at encouraging public transportation ridership. The project makes transit agency schedule data available, accessible, and open to developers so they can create applications to make it easier to ride. CityGoRound.org is a new portal where you can find the many applications developers have have created to ease and increase the convenience of riding transit.