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Open Data Session at Repository Fringe 2009
Earlier today the OKF’s Jordan Hatcher and Jo Walsh gave a tutorial on open data at the Repository Fringe 2009. There are some detailed notes on the JISC Datashare blog: Repository Fringe 2009: Afternoon Tutorial (Open Data) Jo gave an overview of the Open Knowledge Foundation – in particular focusing on four principles for developing […]
Read moreNew business models for subscription services?
There are a lot of subscription based models around for access to data services. I notice this more since I’ve been working for UK HE/FE. One example of such a service is the SCRAN image archive, another is the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. The subscription-based model has to expose something to prove it’s worth subscribing […]
Read moreWhat 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). […]
Read moreOpen dictionary databases: an overview
Open dictionaries are excellent examples of open knowledge projects. Whether monolingual or bilingual, and whether dealing with definitions, etymology, translation or pronounciation – they can often be large, collaborative undertakings. Dictionary databases have a wide variety of potential applications – from education and research to machine translation and integration with software applications and services. We’ve […]
Read moreInterested in open knowledge and international development?
Next Wednesday 22nd July there will be a virtual meeting for a new Working Group on Open Knowledge in Development: http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/development If you’re interested in open knowledge and international development you’re welcome to come along and join in discussion, which will be about what the new working group should focus on – as well as […]
Read morePostmaster General Ernest Marples’ Postcode Lookup API
Harry Metcalfe and Richard Pope recently let us know about their new postcode lookup API, named after Ernest Marples, the Postmaster General who introduced the Postcode: http://ernestmarples.com/ More about the service: Post codes are really useful, but the powers that be keep them closed unless you have loads of money to pay for them. Which […]
Read moreBeta release of Weaving History!
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 […]
Read more2nd Communia Workshop, Torino
Just over a week ago was the 2nd Communia Workshop, which took place in Turin. The theme was ‘Global Science and the Economics of Knowledge-Sharing Institutions’ – and there was a great line up of scientists, economists, and legal scholars, as well as representatives from various research bodies and NGOs. Papers, slides and audio will […]
Read moreSpeaking at OpenTech 2009
Tomorrow I’ll be talking at OpenTech 2009 in a session on “Open Government Data” with Richard Stirling of the Cabinet Office and John Sheridan of OPSI. With the recent, and very welcome, news on opening up government data both here and abroad I’ll be giving some suggested dos and don’ts for this process under the […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 11
Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 11 has just been sent out: Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 11 Welcome to the eleventh Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter! Contents: The OKF turns five and we need your support! Open Database License (ODbL) goes 1.0 European Open Data Inventory + Summit Launch of the Open Data Grid New developments […]
Read moreOpen Database License (ODbL) v1.0 Released
Open Data Commons have released v1.0 of the Open Database License (ODbL), a share-alike license for data and databases. This is really big news for anyone working on open data as there are very few open data licenses available and none that provide for share-alike. From the announce: We are delighted to announce the release […]
Read moreThanks for all the fish (data)!
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 […]
Read moreNew developments on ‘Where Does My Money Go?’
We’ve been doing some more work on Where Does My Money Go?. The project, will provide an interactive represention of UK public finance using maps, timelines, and best of breed visualisation technologies. We’ve now put together a basic visualisation based on data we’ve cleaned up from the Treasury: http://www.openeconomics.net/wdmmg/dept/ We’ve also had confirmation from the […]
Read moreFrench translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)
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 […]
Read moreNew developments on Public Domain Works!
We have now completed a major load of data into the Public Domain Works database: http://publicdomainworks.net/ There are now 125318 persons, 12840 items and 299141 works in the database. The data we have there comes primarily from two sources: people and book data from Philip Harper’s NGCOBA and recordings data from the online discographies provided […]
Read moreODC Open Database License (ODbL) Release Candidate 2 is Out
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 […]
Read moreKForge v0.16 Released
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 […]
Read moreTwo new board members: James Casbon and Paula Le Dieu!
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 […]
Read moreThe OKF Turns 5 – And We Need Your Support
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 […]
Read moreNew mailing list for open knowledge in development
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 […]
Read moreVirtual meeting for Working Group on Open Data in Science
Next Tuesday 2nd June the Working Group on Open Data in Science will have their first meeting. While the meeting will focus on the Working Group’s activities, anyone is welcome to participate. Details are as follows: When: 2nd June 2009, 1600 GMT Where: #okfn IRC channel on oftc.net (you can connect via Mibbit) Wiki: http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/science/1 […]
Read moreFlickr put shapefiles in the public domain
Last week there was some great news from Flickr: We are releasing all of the Flickr shapefiles as a single download, available for use under the Creative Commons Zero Waiver. That’s fancy-talk for “public domainâ€. They gave the following reasons for their decision: We want people (developers, researchers and anyone else who wants to play) […]
Read moreINSPIRE Directive heading towards UK law
INSPIRE, the directive establishing a spatial data infrastructure for environmental information in Europe, is heading into UK law at last. DEFRA is doing a consultation on the transposition of the law and OKFN will hopefully co-submit a response by 26th May with the Open Rights Group, a summary of the responses is on the okfn-discuss […]
Read moreData.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 […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009 – Post-Event Information
We’re pleased to announce that slides, audio and photos from OKCon 2009 are now available at: http://okfn.org/okcon/2009/after Speakers included: Mark Charmer, AKVO Vinay Gupta, Appropedia Simon Parrish, Aidinfo + Karin Christiansen, PublishWhatYouFund Tom Scott, BBC Jeni Tennison, London Gazette + RDFa Leigh Dodds, Talis David Bollier, OnTheCommons + Author of Viral Spiral If you have […]
Read moreVirtual Meeting for Open Textbooks, 20th May 2009
The Community College Open Textbook Project, California Digital Marketplace, and the Open Knowledge Foundation invite those with an interest in open textbooks to a meeting on Wednesday, May 20th at 1330-1530 pm PDT (2130-2330 GMT or 2230-0030 CET). The meeting will be primarly focused on metadata, tagging, interoperability issues, and repository efforts for open textbooks. […]
Read moreLaunch 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 […]
Read moreCornell University Library keeps reproductions of public domain works in the public domain
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 […]
Read moreCKAN 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 […]
Read moreEuropean Open Data Summit
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 […]
Read moreCKAN package party and general online meetup: Saturday 16th May 2009
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 […]
Read moreOpen Data Commons Release v1.0 Release Candidate for Open Database License
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 […]
Read more5th 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 […]
Read moreEuropean Open Data Inventory
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 […]
Read moreOpen Everything NYC, 18th April 2009
In the past, we have been involved in Open Everything London and Open Everything Berlin. John Britton, who organised Open Everything Hong Kong, is now organising an Open Everything NYC event which will take next Saturday 18th April. It should be a great opportunity to meet other people interested in ‘openness’ – from open knowledge […]
Read moreUS CIO Kundra Plans data.gov Site
I just saw this transcript of US CIO Kundra’s first conference call where he states: VK: One of the things we want to do is embark on launching data.gov which would democratize data and give data access to the public and based on that challenge whether it is citizens, NGOs the private sector to help […]
Read moreTalis launches ‘Connected Commons’ for open data at OKCon 2009
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 […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read more5th COMMUNIA Workshop: Programme Details
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 […]
Read moreBeta version of the Open Database Licence (ODbL)
As we announced in January the OKF has adopted the Open Data Commons project. As part of the project Jordan Hatcher has been working on a new Open Database License (ODbL) – which went into beta at the end of last month: The Open Database Licence (ODbL) is a licence agreement intended to allow you […]
Read moreWorking Group on Open Data in Science
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Working Group on Open Data in Science. In the first instance, the group will aim to: Act as a central point of reference and support for people who think they are interested in open data in science. Identify practices of early adopters, collecting data and […]
Read moreAppropedia: open knowledge for sustainability and development
Appropedia is a wiki for sharing knowledge related to sustainability and development: Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development through the use of appropriate technology and the sharing of project information. Started in 2006, there are currently over 14,000 pages – covering everything from DIY energy and sanitation […]
Read moreChris Corbin joins OKF Advisory Board
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 […]
Read moreAkvo: open knowledge project for water and sanitation
Akvo is a project to share tools and resources related to water and sanitation: Akvo creates and shares internet tools that help to provide clean water and proper sanitation to those who today have none. We help everyone share knowledge, match more projects to funds, and simplify reporting. We work with people around the world […]
Read moreOpen Everything Berlin + CC Salon Berlin
After the success of open everything Berlin last December (see documentation), the newthinking network and CC Salon Berlin teamed up to put on another event in Berlin last night: CC Salon Berlin and openeverything focus – Feb. 26 (CC Blog) openeverything focus + CC Salon (Michelle Thorne’s blogpost) I was invited to speak – and […]
Read more“Open Shakespeare Edition” Book Design
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 […]
Read morePublic Interest Information Policy in Germany
I was recently asked to write a piece for Berlin-based think tank Das Progressive Zentrum on public interest information policy in Germany: Wem gehört das Wissen? Informationspolitik in Deutschland (Shorter German version) Public Interest Information Policy in Germany (Longer English version) The piece finishes with three policy suggestions: Support legislation as well as licensing and […]
Read moreKForge v0.15 Released
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 […]
Read moreComments on the Science Commons Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data
Here I briefly comment on the Science Commons Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data as the protocol strongly advocates a position of ‘PD’-only. As will be apparent from the earlier essay on Open Data: Openness and Licensing I do not entirely share this view. The Protocol gives 3 basic reasons for preferring the ‘PD’ approach […]
Read moreFacts and Databases
[This post is an addendum to the earlier essay on Open Data: Openness and Licensing] It is important to be clear that any IP ‘rights’ in data(bases) are not ‘rights’ in the facts those data represent but in the ‘data collection’ (or database). Here I try to explain the difference (fairly crudely) with some examples. […]
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