10 years ago, I asked an innocent question on Twitter. Is there any service which will let me "check in" to a beer? Because this Chocolate Tom I'm drinking is amazing. — Terence Eden (@edent) July 21, 2011 The answers came in swiftly - Untappd was the app to use. So, a few minutes later:…
Continue reading →
A couple of months into the pandemic, I realised that I was vastly overpaying for my mobile usage. I was paying £10/month for unlimited calls, texts, and 8GB data. That's a pretty reasonable price, but I was sat at home all day on WiFi - so I had no need for data. I don't send…
Continue reading →
A few months ago, I wrote about how data is so cheap it is being given away. Mobile network Three were offering £10 data SIMs which came with 200MB of zero-cost data. Recently, I've found another free provider of data, with an intriguing price-plan. RWG Mobile are a Welsh MVNO who use EE as their…
Continue reading →
As I am a bear of very little brain, these are notes to myself on my slightly shonky process for creating animated TreeMaps in R. The aim is to end up with something like this: Generate the images Getting the data is left as an exercise for the reader (sorry!). This loops through the data…
Continue reading →
To be clear - I don't care about this; I just think it is interesting. Is the word "data" a plural? On a strict reading, yes. Datum is singular, data is its plural. But humans are spongey meatbags who evolve language. And there will always be a tension between traditionalists and modernists. So, I took…
Continue reading →
When I first started in the mobile industry, 3G had just launched. It was slow and expensive. Nowadays it is fast and free. UK Network Three are giving away free SIMs which comes with 200MB per month of free data. Visit three.co.uk/datareward to register. My SIM was delivered a few days later. Update - the…
Continue reading →
Without your permission, or even your awareness, tech companies are harvesting your location, your likes, your habits, your relationships, your fears, your medical issues, and sharing it amongst themselves, as well as with governments and a multitude of data vultures. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide…
Continue reading →
After writing about how to use MoneyDashboard's unofficial API, the good folk at Moneyed told me about their officially supported API! So here's a quick review & howto guide. Moneyed is a slightly strange service. I think it is designed for companies to give as a benefit to their employees. But you can sign up…
Continue reading →
Yesterday, I wrote up how to use the MoneyDashboard Classic API. Read that blog post first before reading this one. MoneyDashboard have launched a new "Neon" service. The API is a bit more simple, but authentication is harder. Here's a quick guide to the bits of the API that I found useful. I've lightly redacted…
Continue reading →The OpenBanking specification is brilliant. It allows you to aggregate all of your financial accounts in one place. You can give read or write access to apps and services. Magic! API access is restricted to registered financial institutions. That's good, because it puts up a barrier to entry preventing dodgy companies slurping up your data…
Continue reading →