When I'm discussing business models around open data I regularly refer to a few different examples. Not all of these have well developed case studies, so I thought I'd start trying to capture them here. In this first write-up I'm going to look at Discogs. In an attempt to explore a few different aspects of the service … Continue reading Discogs: a business based on public domain data
Category: Open Data
Checking Fact Checkers
As of last month Google News attempts to highlight fact check articles. Content from fact checking organisations will be tagged so that their contribution to on-line debate can be more clearly identified. I think this is a great move and a first small step towards addressing wider concerns around use of the web for disinformation and … Continue reading Checking Fact Checkers
Current gaps in the open data standards framework
In this post I want to highlight what I think are some fairly large gaps in the standards we have for publishing and consuming data on the web. My purpose for writing these down is to try and fill in gaps in my own knowledge, so leave a comment if you think I'm missing something … Continue reading Current gaps in the open data standards framework
Why are bulk downloads of open data important?
I was really pleased to see that at the GODAN Summit last week the USDA announced the launch of its Branded Food Product Database, providing nutritional information on over 80,000 food products. Product reference data is an area that has been long under-represented in the open data commons, so its great to see data of … Continue reading Why are bulk downloads of open data important?
People like you are in this dataset
One of the recent projects we've done at Bath: Hacked is to explore a sample of the Strava Metro data covering the city of Bath. I'm not going to cover all of the project details in this post, but if you're interested then I suggest you read this introductory post and then look at some of the different … Continue reading People like you are in this dataset
Help me use your data
I've been interviewed a couple of times recently by people interested in understanding how best to publish data to make it useful for others. Once by a startup and a couple of times by researchers. The core of the discussion has essentially been the same question: "how do you know if a dataset will be … Continue reading Help me use your data
Reputation data portability
Yesterday I went to the ODI lunchtime lecture on portability of reputation data. It was an interesting discussion which triggered a few thoughts which I thought I'd share here. The debate was prompted by a call for evidence from the Department formally known as BIS around consumer data and account switching: "The government would like to understand … Continue reading Reputation data portability
The state of open licensing
I spend a lot of time reading through licences and terms & conditions. Much more so than I thought I would when I first started getting involved with open data. After all, I largely just like making things with data. But there's still so much data that is public but not open. Or datasets that are nearly open … Continue reading The state of open licensing
“The Wizard of the Wash”, an open data parable
The fourth open data parable. In a time long past, in a land far away, there was once a great fen. A vast, sprawling wetland filled with a richness of plants and criss-crossed with many tiny streams and rivers. This fertile land was part of a great kingdom ruled by a wise and recently crowned … Continue reading “The Wizard of the Wash”, an open data parable
Discussion document: archiving open data
This is a brief post to highlight a short discussion document that I recently published about archiving open data. The document is intended to help gather ideas, suggestions and best practices around archiving open data to the Internet Archive. The goal being to gather together useful guidance that can help encourage archiving and distribution of open data … Continue reading Discussion document: archiving open data
Lost Boy 