I’m an advocate for open data – both in my professional role and in a personal capacity. One of the hard things is succinctly explaining that “open data” means “non-personally identifiable data at a sufficient granularity to be useful without proving a risk to any individual’s (or group’s) reasonable expectations of privacy while still being…
Continue reading →
It’s quite popular to see high street shops names “Somesuch and Sons”. Indeed, my grandparents ran “Eden & Sons” for many year. Much rarer is seeing “… & daughters”. But, of course, the plural of anecdote is not data! The UK register of businesses – Companies House – has a pretty good search engine. Doing…
Continue reading →
Back in 2014, I released a year’s worth of solar generation data. I was enormously proud to recently discover that the data were cited in a couple of academic papers: Colantuono, Giuseppe & Kor, Ah-Lian & Pattinson, Colin & Gorse, Christopher PV with multiple storage as function of geolocation (2018) page: 217-232. Elsevier BV. Solar…
Continue reading →
I have a Tado smart thermostat – part of my smarthome project. As well as letting me set the temperature from my phone, it records environmental data, and provides a handy API for me to retrieve it. This blog post will show you why I’ve gathered the data, let you download the full dataset, and…
Continue reading →
Glasgow City Council has released a treasure-trove of open data. Nearly one-hundred datasets ranging from Live Traffic Information – to historic climate data. A fantastic boon for researches and open government enthusiasts. But there’s a sting in the tail. The majority of the datasets are under the Open Government Licence (OGL). That’s basically Creative Commons…
Continue reading →
For the last year-and-a-bit, Liz and I have been running OpenBenches.org. An open data website dedicated to memorial benches. Here are some rough and ready numbers about how it has gone so far. 9,870 Benches At the time of writing, we’re a little shy of 10,000 benches. As you can see, we have photos from…
Continue reading →Last week I took an all-too-short visit to Aberdeen for Open Data Camp 6. A two-day unconference looking at Open Data from an international perspective. What works, what doesn’t, how we can do better, and what exciting things are coming up. I was mostly there for work – but managed to spend some time talking…
Continue reading →
Bin day is the most magical time of the week! Children of all ages cry “Which bins is it?! Oh! Which bins?” Is today recycling day? Or green waste day? Or humble landfill day? Should my food caddy go out? Gosh! Who can keep track? I mean, obviously I could look at my calendar. Or…
Continue reading →
You can now get the UK’s flood forecast as part of your Flash Briefing on Amazon’s Alexa. I’ve tried previously to create an interactive Alexa skill – it did not go well. This time, I thought I’d create an easier skill – a Flash Briefing. You ask Alexa for your daily news report and it…
Continue reading →
The British State’s desire for its citizens’ private data is becoming unquenchable. As part of a minor act of disobedience, I decided to send two Freedom of Information requests. The first to the Home Secretary asking for her email metadata. The second to the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey asking for her web browsing…
Continue reading →