Recognizing that simply publishing snapshots of government information is not enough to make it open, we need to improve the quality, accessibility, timeliness, and usability of our data and content through well-defined standards that include the use of machine-readable formats such as web APIs and common metadata tagging schemas.

WHITEHOUSE: Digital Government

That is the way most of today's Web-search sites look for multimedia files--by scanning "metadata" associated with Web content.

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The latter is using the web service to capture and store images and metadata collected from the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Science Laboratory missions.

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Metadata is basically data about data that sits in a web sites programming.

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