In a press release earlier this week, it was announced that there will be moves to open up geospatial data produced by the Ordnance Survey: The Prime Minister and Communities Secretary John Denham will today announce that the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey maps from next year, as part of a Government […]
We’ve pleased to announce the alpha release of our Where Does My Money Go prototype. This is a web application that allows you to explore UK public spending – and you can take a look here: http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/wdmmg-alpha/ Update: access underlying data here. This an “alpha” release and its still a way from finished – we’re […]
The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010 Call for Proposals is now open! We would be grateful for help in circulating the call to relevant lists and communities! You can reuse or point to: This blog post Main CFP page Plain text announce (wrapped at 72 characters) Identi.ca post Twitter post Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: […]
We’re pleased to announce the release of KForge v0.17! KForge is an open source (GPL) suite of tools for for managing software and knowledge projects. Tools available currently include: Wikis and mailing lists (e.g. MoinMoin, Mailman). Content management systems and blogs (e.g. Joomla, WordPress, DAV). Version control systems (e.g. Subversion, Mercurial, Git). A project framework […]
Our Open Data and Semantic Web workshop is coming up next Friday 13th November in London, kindly sponsored by Talis. In preparation for the workshop, we have started a Linking Open Data group on CKAN, our open-source registry of open data, based on the new group feature we announced last week. We currently have 83 […]
We are seeking an Editor for Open Text Book, one of the highest ranked sites on the web for finding textbooks that you can freely use, reuse and redistribute: http://www.opentextbook.org/ This is a volunteer position requiring a one to two day a month commitment. If you are interested in contributing to the world of open […]
We recently blogged about some mockups for our Where Does My Money Go? project. We’ve now got some new mockups for the project which are show below (click through for full size). Again, we’d love to hear what you think of the designs! You can either leave a comment below, or pop a note to […]
The last six months have seen significant developments on our Open Shakespeare project, many of which have are reflected on the website: http://www.openshakespeare.org/ The most major advance is the availability of new HTML and PDF editions of the texts, see, for example, these versions of Twelfth Night: http://www.openshakespeare.org/resource/view/92/twelfth-night-moby/ http://www.openshakespeare.org/pdf/twelfth_night_moby.pdf We’ve also made improvements to multiview, […]
OpenFlights is a site for “flight logging, mapping, stats and sharing”. We’re very pleased to hear they’ve just released their data under the Open Database License (ODbL): One of OpenFlights‘ most popular features is our dynamic airport and airline route mapping, and today, we’re proud to release the underlying data in an easy-to-use form, up […]
European policy analyst David Osimo recently invited me to be on the steering committee of a new ‘Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0’. The background page says: Every two years, EU Ministers gather to agree on a Ministerial Declaration on e-government, which is the main European strategic document. This is usually accompanied by an Industry […]
We are currently building a prototype for the Where Does My Money Go? – and we’ve now got the first mockups of what the site will look like… For full size versions you can see: spending by region spending by function We’d love to hear what you think of the designs! You can either leave […]
The UK Government’s public sector data site launched last week in a private beta — and it’s using CKAN as its backend for storing all its dataset info! They’ve got more than a 1000 existing data sets, from 7 departments, all brought together for the first time in a re-useable form. They’re eager to get […]
There is often a tendency to talk of ‘the public domain’ and of works falling out of copyright and ‘into the public domain’ – as though there is a single set of works which are out of copyright all over the world. In fact, of course, there are different national laws about the nature and […]
Yesterday the Australian government announced its new MashupAustralia competition, with a prize fund of over $20,000 Australian dollars: Today the Government 2.0 Taskforce is launching its MashupAustralia contest […]. To fuel your innovative mashup juices, around 59 datasets from the Australian and State and Territory Governments have been released at data.australia.gov.au on license terms and […]
We’ve just added a Macedonian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Ljube Babunski. http://opendefinition.org/1.0/Makedonski_jazik If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or on info at the OKF’s domain name (okfn dot org).
Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 12 has just been sent out. If you would like to receive this via email, you can join our main okfn-announce list. Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 12 Welcome to the twelfth Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter! Contents: New report on sharing aid information is now open for comments Open Data […]
We’ve just added a Swedish translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Peter Krantz (who’s work on open data in Sweden we recently blogged about) and Staffan Malmgren. http://opendefinition.org/1.0/Svenska If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or […]
We’re pleased to announce the publication of a new report, Unlocking the potential of aid information. The report, by the Open Knowledge Foundation and Aidinfo, looks at how to make information related to international development (i) legally open, (ii) technically open and (iii) easy to find. The report and relevant background information can be found […]
The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) has recently released data from the National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database to be put on Open Street Map (OSM). As it says on the NaPTAN website: NaPTAN provides a unique identifier for every point of access to public transport in the UK, together with meaningful text descriptions […]
We are pleased to announce the release of CKAN version 0.9! CKAN is the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, a registry of open knowledge packages and projects. Changes include: Add version attribute for package Fix purge to use new version of Versioned Domain Model (vdm) (0.4) Link to changed packages when listing revision Show most recently […]
We are pleased to announce the first public beta of Weaving History! Weaving History lets you create ‘factlets‘, containing basic information about historical events, persons, and so on, which you can string together to create historical ‘threads‘. These threads can then be visually represented on maps and timelines. There’s a function that lets you automatically […]
EUTransparency, who created FarmSubsidy and organised the European Open Data Summit have launched a new site with data on payments made under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. From the press release: Today sees the launch of fishsubsidy.org, a new transparency website from the farmsubsidy.org stable. It presents data on 97,260 payments totalling 8.5 billion euro […]
We’ve just added a French translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Caroline Ker and Séverine Dusollier at the University of Namur, Belgium! http://opendefinition.org/1.0/Francais If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or at info (at) the OKF’s […]
Open Data Commons, a project we help host and run, has put out its second and final “Release Candidate” of the Open Database License (ODbL). As it states in the announcement: The Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 “Release Candidate 2” is now available at: http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ As expected there haven’t been many changes from the first […]
Another release (v0.16) of KForge is now out. It’s amazing to think this will mark KForge’s 4th anniversary! KForge is the software behind our KnowledgeForge service and the code is now very stable — we plan for the next release to be our official “1.0”. On this occasion there are the following changes worthy of […]
We are pleased to welcome two new members to the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Board of Directors: The first is James Casbon, a bioinformatics programmer: James Casbon has been working with open knowledge throughout his professional career. He has been responsible for analysing and managing large scale data sets in genomics, aerospace and finance. He is […]
This month the Open Knowledge Foundation is five years old. Over those last five years we’ve done much to promote open access to information — from sonnets to stats, genes to geodata — not only in the form of specific projects like Open Shakespeare and Public Domain Works but also in the creation of tools […]
We’ve just launched a new mailing list for those interested in open knowledge in development: http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/open-development As you may have seen we had a session on Open Knowledge for Development at OKCon 2009. There was also discussion of the value of sharing knowledge for development at the 5th Communia Workshop – particularly from Pierre Guillaume […]
The US governments new data.gov site (which we blogged about last month) is now live! There are currently a selection of core datasets available – from information about World Copper Smelters to results from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Raw data is available in XML, Text/CSV, KML/KMZ, Feeds, XLS, or ESRI Shapefile formats. As well […]
In the last couple of months we’ve had several threads on the okfn-discuss list about distributed storage for open data (see here and here). Last month we started a distributed storage project, aiming to provide distributed storage infrastructure for OKF and other open knowledge projects. After researching various technical options, we’ve launched an Open Data […]
Yesterday Cornell University University Library announced that it will ‘remove all restrictions’ on digital reproductions of public domain works, meaning these are open as in opendefinition.org. From the press release: ITHACA, N.Y. (May 11, 2009) – In a dramatic change of practice, Cornell University Library has announced it will no longer require its users to […]
A new release of CKAN is now out together with a new, and substantially improved versioned domain model library. Changes include: View information about package history (ticket:53) Basic datapkg integration (ticket:57) Show information about package openness using icons (ticket:56) One-stage package create/registration (r437) Reinstate package attribute validation (r437) Upgrade to vdm 0.4 The CKAN code […]
Last week was the first European Open Data Summit in Brussels (which we blogged about here) organised by EU Transparency, who created farmsubsidy.org. The event brought together journalists, researchers, civic hackers, and representatives from European institutions for two days of documenting and building on documents and datasets from European institutions and member states. At the […]
We’re planning another CKAN package party + general OKFN online meetup for Saturday 16th of May. It’s a general meetup but with a focus on CKAN packaging so feel free to come and chat about anything open knowledge related — everyone and anyone is welcome. When: Saturday 16th May 2009, 1430-1730 BST (1330-1630 GMT, 0930-1230 […]
Open Data Commons, a project we help host, has put out a v1.0 “Release Candidate” for their Open Database License (ODbL). As it states in the announcement: This updated version of the license incorporates a whole set of changes arising out of the earlier comments period and the main changes are summarized below. As the […]
The 5th Communia Workshop took place last month at the London School of Economics. It brought together researchers, policy-makers, stakeholders and representatives from across Europe, the United States and Australia for two days of talks and discussions about reusing public sector content and data. In the afternoon of the first day, participants co-drafted a simple […]
We’re currently working on a European Open Data Inventory: This is an inventory of EU-relevant datasets that is being compiled by EU Transparency, the NGO that made farmsubsidy.org and the Open Knowledge Foundation. It includes data that is already available, as well as data that we know exists but is not published – from budget […]
We’re pleased to announce that Talis launched their Connected Commons for open data at OKCon 2009 on Saturday! The Talis Connected Commons scheme is intended to directly support the publishing and reuse of Linked Data in the public domain by removing the costs associated with those activities. The scheme is intended to support a wide […]
Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009 will take place next Saturday 28th March – less than a week away! where: Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL, London when: 28th March 2009, 1030-1830 home: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ register: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/ If you plan to attend, and haven’t registered yet – we encourage you to book your ticket now as space […]
The 5th COMMUNIA Workshop will take place in London next week – on the 26-27th March. There’s a great programme of speakers – and details of which are below. There are a handful of tickets left – so if you’d like to come along, make sure and register now! If you aren’t able to make […]
We are pleased to announce that Christopher Corbin is now a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Board: Christopher Corbin is an independent researcher and advisor on the information society and the knowledge economy with specific interest in policy and its implementation with respect to public sector information. He is an openly selected expert […]
We’ve been thinking for a while that it would be a nice addition to the Open Shakespeare project to produce an “Open Shakespeare Edition” of the Bard’s works. By an ‘Edition’ we meant something designed as a book and suitable for printing: so an elegant title page, relevant front-matter, properly typeset text etc. This could […]
Another release of KForge is out. KForge is the software we use to run: http://www.knowledgeforge.net/ The code is now pretty stable, being 1.0 is in all but name and so releases are fewer and further between. This release saw some significant feature additions plus bugfixes and documentation improvements. Changes include: KForge plugin discovery via setuptools […]
where: Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL, London when: 28th March 2009, 1030-1830 home: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ programme: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme register: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/ call for proposals: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/cfp/ last year: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/2008/ The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is back for its fourth installment bringing together individuals and groups from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of discussions workshops. This […]
Jed Sundwall of Netsquared just published an interview with Rufus Pollock, co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. The interview includes discussion about the distinction between price and value, about the Open Knowledge Definition, about CKAN, about decentralised approaches to working with large quantities of data, about packaging for knowledge and about ‘Shiny Front End Syndrome’. […]
Recently we made some substantial improvements/additions to our Open Economics project including: Improved javascript graphing. Extend Millenium Development Goals package and added web interface. First efforts at ‘Where Does My Money Go’ Aim: Dig up govt finance info and visualize the results (online) http://okfn.org/wiki/projects/Where_Does_My_Money_Go More details on each of these can be found below. Also […]
Just over a year ago Open Data Commons was launched as a home for the new open data licenses such as the PDDL which had been developed by Jordan Hatcher and Dr Charlotte Waelde. From early on, Jordan, the legal expert and aficianado-of-openness and the main mover behind these efforts, had been talking with us […]
With the inauguration of US President-Elect Barack Obama later today – we thought we’d prepare a brief list of things he can do to promote openness in his new role. Open government data. Make core government data open (as in opendefinition.org) – so that it can be re-used in mashups, visually represented, used in semantic […]
Over the holiday we added an Icelandic translation of the Open Knowledge Definition! Many thanks to Hjalmar Gislason and Icelandic Open Data! If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or at info (at) the OKF’s domain name.
Update (2009-02-23): registration for this workshop is now open. There is also a provisional programme. We are pleased to announce that the 5th COMMUNIA Workshop, “Accessing, Using and Reusing Public Sector Content and Data” will take place in London in March 2009. Details are as follows: When: 26-27th March 2009 Where: New Academic Building, London […]
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