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Fast-growing technical forum StackOverflow is launching a new service today called Careers 2.0, where programmers can build a resume out of the technical questions and answers they've contributed to the StackOverflow site. The service was unveiled at the Launch conference today in San Francisco.

It's a great example of building value on top of passively collected data from another kind of activity. Millions of programmers visit and participate in StackOverflow forums to find and share free, community-vetted discussions about their technical challenges. Now the site will help them transform that activity into a resume that employers can find and evaluate. It's free for job seekers; the cost for employers is $500 for one week of access or $5k for one year subscription, with a money back guarantee if an employer doesn't find anyone to hire.

Last month, Condé Nast social news site Reddit asked users if they would donate their data for research purposes. This week the site made available a data dump from more than 40,000 people who opted-in to sharing what they do on the site. It's a remarkable move than every social network could learn from.

Reddit's goal for this data is to see it used to create a recommendation engine - in particular a system that would highlight some of the niche communities on Reddit that are a great place to find good topical content, but that too few people on the site have discovered. Now that the data is out in the wild, however, any number of analyses can be performed on it - and no one knows what kinds of observations about the relationship between people, web content, voting and news will be discovered. One little account preference opens up a world of opportunities: "allow my data to be used for research purposes."

StackOverflow started as software developer Q&A site. The traffic on the site spiked like mad and stayed that way. Then, its founders, Joel and Jeff, had to buy a warehouse to keep their VC money in. Now, they've begun rolling out verticals.

Today, the latest version opened for private beta. GIS StackExchange is for people involved or interested in Geographic Information Systems. The beta is restricted to members of the Area51 GIS community but the public beta will begin on the 29th.

A site called "Web Applications" (beta) is the newest addition to the Stack Exchange network, a service that powers popular tech Q&A sites including StackOverflow, ServerFault, SuperUser.com and StackApps. Like the others before it, the new site uses the same back-end framework to create a simple user interface where people can post questions and answers, this time about Web applications. For example: How do you export mail from Gmail? Or delete your Facebook account? Or send giant files via email?

But "Web Applications" is just the first of many new StackOverflow-like sites on the horizon, and surprisingly, the next sites to launch may not be tech-focused at all.

They say raising venture capital is a young man's game. Joel Spolsky is a very logical exception to that rule and will announce today that his question and answer site for computer programmers, StackOverflow, has raised $6 million from some of the hottest investors in Web technology. Union Square Ventures, Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Joshua Schachter and others have put in money. Industry luminaries Clay Shirky and Anil Dash have joined the team as advisors. That's a real dream team for a Web startup.

Just over a year ago, we were excited to report on a new website for programmers. StackOverflow was the brainchild of coders/rockstars Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and it was a social Q&A channel that promised to give programmers solutions for even the most obscure bugs.

Apparently, that approach to developer support was a solid one. These days, the site gets around 1.8 million unique visitors a month and has served as a prototype for white-label Q&A sites for companies, too. The site's latest merit badge is an official nod from the Android team, which has announced StackOverflow as the official home of Android developer Q&A support.

At this point, most programmers have already heard about StackOverflow. First started last year by celebrity coders Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, coding Q&A site StackOverflow crowdsources programming solutions for all to see. The site is popular for its Digg-like voting interface, clean design and, of course, its useful information. The duo has since begun licensing the software behind StackOverflow to provide companies with customizable Q&A forums on a number of topics.

Digg for programming questions? Joel on Software and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror start letting users into their well built site.

The highly anticipated general release of StackOverflow, the social site for programming questions developed by rock star programmers Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, hasn't happened yet - but the doors are cracked open and many new users are streaming in this morning.