Panel: We are Making the Tech We Want

With the skills that the panellists have, it would be easier to work for the mainstream tech industry and just go with the flow. But they’ve all chosen a different path: making software that makes sense. In this conversation, we’ll share the trajectories of some open, free/libre, and alternative technologies, and discuss how to tip the scales in our favour amidst a solutionist discourse in an ultra-specialised industry.

Open Data Editor: Our Open Source Dependency Just Disappeared

The sudden disappearance of this core dependency only reinforces the idea that we should aim to build simpler, less dependent technologies.

CKAN 2.11: Hypermedia approach for the tech we want

The new version integrates HTMX to CKAN and opens up the way for creating dynamic user interfaces.

Data Package version 2.0 is out!

Thanks to the generous support of NLnet, now Data Package includes features that were often requested throughout the years and improves extensibility for domain-specific implementations.

Frictionless specs update

Originally published on: https://frictionlessdata.io/blog/2023/11/15/frictionless-specs-update/ We are very pleased to announce that thanks to the generous support of NLnet we have kickstarted the Frictionless specifications update. After a first discussion with the community in the last call, we are setting up a working group to help us with the v2 release. Taking into account the group’s concerns about the […]

Frictionless DarwinCore Tool by André Heughebaert

This blog is part of a series showcasing projects developed during the 2019 Frictionless Data Tool Fund. The 2019 Frictionless Data Tool Fund provided four mini-grants of $5,000 to support individuals or organisations in developing an open tool for reproducible research built using the Frictionless Data specifications and software. This fund is part of the […]

Community Sessions: Video Skillshare and Open Education

Happy June! We have a few Community Sessions to announce. OKFestival is almost a month away. Videos are key for storytelling, so we are hosting a Video Skillshare to help us all learn. The Open Education Working Group will join us to talk about why open data matters in education. Join us for these two […]

Energy Buildings Performance Scenarios as Linked Open Data

This is a blog post by Martin Kaltenböck & Anne-Claire Bellec, cross-posted from the Semantic Puzzle Blog. Anne-Claire Bellec is Communications Manager at the Global Buildings Performance Network (http://www.gbpn.org), located at GBPNs headquarters in Paris, France, and Martin Kaltenböck is the responsible for web-based data tools at Semantic Web Company, a Linked Open Data specialised […]

The DataTank 4.0

This post was written by Pieter Colpaert, a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Belgium Chapter. The DataTank is open source software, just like CKAN, Drupal or Elastic Search, which you can use to transform a dataset into an HTTP API. Today (the 5th of December 2014), we are proud to launch the 4.0 version […]

Open Data Training at the Open Knowledge Foundation

We’re delighted to announce today the launch of a new portfolio of open data training programs. For many years the Open Knowledge Foundation has been working — both formally and informally — with governments, civil society organisations and others to provide this kind of advice and training. Today marks the first time we’ve brought it […]

Git (and Github) for Data

The ability to do “version control” for data is a big deal. There are various options but one of the most attractive is to reuse existing tools for doing this with code, like git and mercurial. This post describes a simple “data pattern” for storing and versioning data using those tools which we’ve been using […]

Announcing CKAN 2.0

CKAN is a powerful, open source, open data management platform, used by governments and organizations around the world to make large collections of data accessible, including the UK and US government open data portals. Today we are very happy and excited to announce the final release of CKAN 2.0. This is the most significant piece […]

Frictionless Data: making it radically easier to get stuff done with data

Frictionless Data is now in alpha at http://data.okfn.org/ – and we’d like you to get involved. Our mission is to make it radically easier to make data used and useful – our immediate goal is make it as simple as possible to get the data you want into the tool of your choice. This isn’t […]

Announcing: Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV), enabling the vocabulary commons

We are delighted to announce that Linked Open Vocabularies is now being hosted on Open Knowledge Foundation servers and is now officially an Open Knowledge Foundation project. ##LOV Project in 5 points LOV is about vocabularies (aka. metadata element sets or ontologies) in OWL / RDFS used to describe linked data. LOV provides a single-stop […]

Introducing PyBossa – the open-source micro-tasking platform

For a while now our network has been working on applications, tools and platforms for crowd-sourcing and micro-tasking. At the end of last year, we posted about a cute little app developed at a hackday called the Data Digitizer that was being used to transcribe Brazillian budgetary data. In recent months we’ve been working closely […]

Introducing the DataStore

A major new feature in the DataHub is good news for data wranglers. The DataStore allows users to store and load structured data into a database, where it can be queried, filtered, or accessed from other programs via a rich data API. The API is also used by CKAN’s inbuilt Recline Data Explorer, giving in-page […]

Open Biblio launches BibSoup in beta

BibSoup is here! And it’s going to revolutionise how you work with bibliographic metadata. The team has been coding and blogging and bugfixing for a while now on the BibServer software, and we’ve mentioned in passing that our own instance has been up and running under the name of BibSoup… Now we are officially launching […]

Major new CKAN release: v1.5!

The following post is by David Read, on behalf of the CKAN team. We’re proud to announce a major new release of CKAN! Version 1.5 brings major improvements including: Major user experience upgrades around dataset publication and access plus a new theme Integrated structured and blob data storage, with associated with data previewing and visualization […]

What open data catalogs are there in your country?

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Earlier this year at OKCon 2011 in Berlin we launched datacatalogs.org to make a comprehensive list of open data catalogs around the world. We’ve just upgraded it to run on the latest version of CKAN, our open source data hub software, […]

Release of DataCatalogs.org to map open data around the world

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re very pleased to announce an alpha version of datacatalogs.org, a website to help keep track of open data catalogues from around the world. The project is being launched to coincide with our annual conference, OKCon 2011. You can see the […]

The Annotator – Preview

In November 2010, Rufus Pollock announced the Annotator project on the OKFN blog. Since this initial release the project has been developed into a fully fledged product. The Annotator is a JavaScript widget that can be added to any webpage to allow inline annotation of its contents. Combined with a storage system, such as AnnotateIt, […]

Open Data Search: finding useful datasets, worldwide

The following post is from Friedrich Lindenberg, who is a developer at the Open Knowledge Foundation working on CKAN, PublicData.eu and Open Spending. Recently, there has hardly been a week in which there hasn’t been an announcement of a new local, regional or national open data initiative – including ever more extensive catalogues of data […]

Eurostat Hackday, 16th December 2010

We’re currently organising a ‘hackday’ on the Eurostat data, which will take place on Wednesday 16th December 2010: If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch on the euopendata mailing list, or drop us a line on eurostat at okfn dot org. From the website: Eurostat Hackday What is Eurostat? Eurostat is the […]

Next version of the Linked Open Data cloud based on CKAN!

Many of you will be familiar with the now ubiquitous Linked Open Data cloud diagram, maintained by Richard Cyganiak. The diagram illustrates efforts to link together many different data sources, from the CIA World Factbook to DBpedia, a structured database of information extracted from Wikipedia. It looks like this: We’re very pleased that the diagram’s […]

Beginnings of an Object Description Mapper

The analogue to an Object-Relational Mapper for RDF. Helping to make OWL Description Logic accessible from Python in a way that will seem familiar to people who are accustomed to things like SQLAlchemy and Django. http://packages.python.org/ordf/odm.html

How to Visualise Worldbank Data with Google Maps

The following guest post is from Holger Drewes, who is a member of Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and the Open Data Network in Berlin. As interfaces for open datasets from political and societal institutions become more and more available, the possibilities for easy and uncomplicated data visualization are expanding in very promising ways. With a […]

Pollen data in the New and Old World

The following guest post is from Stefano Costa at the University of Siena. He is Founder of the IOSA initiative and Coordinator of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on Open Data in Archaeology. Stefano wishes to thank Thomas Kluyver and David Jones for their help in reviewing the post. Since the 19th century, the […]

ORDF – the OKFN RDF Library

Some months ago we started looking at how we might possibly use an RDF store instead of a SQL database behind data-driven websites — of which OKF has several. The reasons have to do with making the data reuseable in a better way than ad-hoc JSON APIs. As we tend to program in Python and […]

CKAN v1.0 Released

We are pleased to announce the availability of version 1.0 of the CKAN software, our open source registry system for datasets (and other resources). After 3 years of development, twelve point releases and a several successful production deployments around the world CKAN has come of age! As well as being used to power http://ckan.net and […]

Public Domain Calculators at Europeana

The following guest post is from Christina Angelopoulos at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) and Maarten Zeinstra at Nederland Kennisland who are working on building a series of Public Domain Calculators as part of the Europeana project. Both are also members of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on the Public Domain. Over the […]

CKAN 0.11 Released

We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.11 of the CKAN software, our open source registry of open data used in ckan.net and data.gov.uk. This is our biggest release so far (55 tickets) with lots of new features and improvements. This release also saw a major new production deployment with the CKAN software […]

New report on sharing aid information is now open for comments

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 […]

CKAN 0.9 Released

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 […]

Open Data and the Semantic Web Workshop, London, 13th November 2009

We’re currently organising a workshop on ‘open data and the semantic web’, which will take place in London this autumn. Details are as follows: When: Friday 13th November 2009, 1000-1800 Where: London Knowledge Lab, 23-29 Emerald Street, London, WC1N 3QS. (See map) Wiki: http://wiki.okfn.org/SemanticWeb Participation: Attendance is free. If you are planning to come along […]

What features should be included in a catalogue of open government data?

There have recently been several posts about what features are desirable in government data catalogues. The Sunlight Foundation recently announced they are planning to build on data.gov to allow “community participation so that people can submit their own data sources” (including support for adding data that is not open such as data with noncommercial restrictions). […]

Data.gov goes live!

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 […]

Launch of Open Data Grid

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 […]

CKAN 0.8 Released

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 […]

5th Communia Workshop: Post-Event Information + Statement

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 […]

Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009: Saturday 28th March

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 […]

Second Open Visualisation Workshop, Saturday 21st June 2008, Trampoline Systems

At the first Open Visualisation Workshop last month, we found there was significant demand for regular workshops. Hence, the second Open Visualisation Workshop will take place a week from Saturday! Details are as follows: When: Saturday 21st June 2008, 11am – 5pm Where: Trampoline Systems, 8-15 Dereham Place, London, EC2A 3HJ (view on OpenStreetMap) Wiki: […]

Versioned Domain Model v0.2 with Support for SQLAlchemy Released

v0.2 of versioned domain model is now finally done — it was 95% complete in Feb but it has taken another 3 months to iron out the last bugs and polish up! Apart from being a concrete implementation of a system for versioning data(bases) — and therefore important for efforts to do more collaborative development […]

After the first Open Visualisation Workshop

The first Open Visualisation Workshop took place on Saturday as we mentioned last week. Details, notes and links are available on the event’s wiki page. The event took place at Trampoline Systems’ new site in East London. To make sure the event was as informal as it was billed to be – we left the […]

Open Visualisation Workshop, Saturday 24th May 2008, Trampoline Systems

As we mentioned last month we’ve been organising an informal, hands-on workshop focusing on open source visualisation technologies. This will take place on this coming Saturday in London. Details are as follows: When: Saturday 24th May 2008 from 11 am until whenever people need to leave (probably 4 or 5 pm); Where: Trampoline Systems, 8-15 […]

CKAN 0.5 Released

The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) version 0.5 has just been released. Changes include: feature to list and search tags feature to make data available in machine-usable form via sql dump feature to purge a revision and associated changes support for reserved html characters in urls upgrade to Pylons 0.9.6 new spam management utilities including […]

OCRing Shakespeare Entry from Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition

One of next things we want to do for open shakespeare is provide an open introduction for to his works. The obvious idea for this was to use the Shakespeare entry in the 11th ed of the Encyclopaedia Britannica as detailed in this ticket: http://p.knowledgeforge.net/shakespeare/trac/ticket/24 We’ve now written code to grab the relevant tiffs off […]

Annotation is Working!

After another push over the last few days I’ve got the web annotation system for Open Shakespeare operational (we’ve been hacking on this on and off since back in December). To see the system in action visit: http://demo.openshakespeare.org/view?name=phoenix_and_the_turtle_gut&format=annotate Quite a bit of effort has been made to decouple the annotation system from Open Shakespeare so […]

Collaborative Development of Data

$ This version: 2007-02-15 (First version 2006-05-24) $ We already have some fairly good working processes for collaborative development of unstructured text: the two most prominent examples being source code of computer programs and wikis for general purpose content (encyclopedias etc). However these tools perform poorly (or not at all) when we come to structured […]

Thinking about Annotation

Annotation means the adding of comments/notes/etc to an underlying resource. For the present I’ll focus on the situation where the underlying resource is textual (as opposed to being an image, or a piece of film or some data). Various things to consider when implementing an annotation/comment system: Addressing and atomisation: Are annotations specific to particular […]

Improvements to the Concordance

One of the main items scheduled for v0.4 of open shakespeare is improvements to the responsiveness of the concordance. Using the v0.3 codebase, using just the sonnets as test material, loading up the list of words for the concordance alone took around 24s on my laptop. This is because even with a single text there […]

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