Extracting contact data from e-mail signatures
0000-0001-5882-6823I often receive emails with signatures (footers; also known as “sigs”) like this one: – John Doe Director of Flying Cars, Acme Ltd., A: 21, Example Street, Birmingham, B1 1AA E:...
View ArticleBullet points from UK Govcamp 2012
0000-0001-5882-6823I spent Friday and Saturday at UKGovCamp2012, a splendid unconference, in London, for people interested in the use of digital technologies in local and national government. Or...
View ArticlePolitician pin ups – open-licensed pictures, please
0000-0001-5882-6823Politicians, like visits to the dentist and taxes, are a necessary evil. We all moan about them, but someone has to take care of the machinery of state. So it’s important that we...
View ArticleHow should a hackday be run?
0000-0001-5882-6823I’m working with a large public-sector organisation who have a considerable — and potentially very useful — body of data. They’re keen to open it up, and would like to encourage...
View ArticleRequesting open-licensed, open-format recordings of the voices of Wikipedia...
0000-0001-5882-6823The Idea A little while ago, my friend and fellow Wikipedia editor Andrew Gray (he’s the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library!) mentioned to me that Wikipedia could do with...
View ArticleDon’t link to my Twitter profile!
0000-0001-5882-6823From time to time, people are kind enough to mention me, with a link, in their blog posts. Usually, in a positive way. I’m very grateful when they do. Lovely links (geddit?)Photo by...
View ArticleFor I’m a Jolly Good Fellow (of the RSA)
0000-0001-5882-6823I may have been overlooked, once again, in the new year’s honours list, but in mid-December I received an unsolicited and very flattering email; I’d been nominated, by their Regional...
View ArticleBBC open licences voice samples from radio programmes; ‘Speakerthon’ event...
0000-0001-5882-6823Over the last few months, I’ve been in discussion with the BBC, encouraging them to make some of their content available under and open licence so that it can be used on Wikipedia....
View ArticleA reply from the UK government to my request for road gritting open data
0000-0001-5882-6823The government website data.gov.uk, to quote its about page, hosts datasets — as open data — ”from all central government departments and a number of other public sector bodies and...
View ArticleORCID plugin for WordPress
0000-0001-5882-6823ORCID, the “Open Research Contributor ID”, is an identifier for contributors to academic papers, journals, and other publications. It’s the equivalent, for such people, of an ISBN...
View ArticleUnited Kingdom parliamentary URL structure: change needed
0000-0001-5882-6823In Wikidata, Wikipedia’s sister project for storing statements of fact as linked, open data, we record a number of unique identifiers. For example, Tim Berners-Lee has the VIAF...
View ArticleFour Stars of Open Standards
0000-0001-5882-6823I’m writing this at UKGovCamp, a wonderful unconference. This post constitutes notes, which I will flesh out and polish later. I’m in a session on open standards in government,...
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