mklang | writing notes

The beauty of open data

Some news is tweetworthy and some is bloggable but the Live train map for the London Underground is definitely both!

Its a map that shows all trains on the London Underground network in approximately real time. How does it work

Live departure data is fetched from the TfL API, and then it does a bit of maths and magic. It’s surprisingly okay given this was done in only a few hours at Science Hackday and the many naming/location issues encountered, some unresolved. A small number of stations are misplaced or missing; occasional trains behave oddly; some H&C stations are missing in the TfL feed.

This is a beautiful example of the strength of open data. Its created by Matthew Somerville (with helpful hinderances from Frances Berriman and James Aylett). The Source code is available.

This is a static shot. But look at it live. Its a work of art… hypnotic!

Posted on June 21, 2010 by mklang

Wikipedia and editorial control

Wikipedia continues to experiment with access and control in relation to the most frequently vandalized pages. Previously it would simply “lock” the pages, removing the ability of anyone to just edit the page. This loses the advantage of dynamic creation which made Wikipedia great and now changes are afoot to enable editing. Instead of locking the pages the organization will have a system of tighter editorial control. As Buzzblog points out there seems to be a paradox between freedom and control but the systems goal is to limit “bad” edits. In an interview Jimmy Wales explained the position “These (pages) have had to be semi-protected for years just because they are too tempting for naughty people to try something funny. But semi-protection has prevented thoughtful and sincere newcomers from making good changes.”

A blog post from Wikipedia’s Moka Pantages explains the changes:

Over the next few days, English language Wikipedia users may notice a small change on some articles: a little magnifying glass where a lock once was. The icon, on the upper right corner of the article, represents an important step that Wikipedia volunteers have taken to open up articles that were previously protected from editing. Starting Tuesday at 11pm UTC, the English Wikipedia community will begin a two-month trial of a new tool called “Pending Changes” (formerly known as Flagged Protection).

Articles that are frequently subjected to malicious edits have long been locked, sometimes for years, and protected from editing by new and anonymous users. Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation and volunteers from the community have been working to develop Pending Changes, a softer alternative to these editing restrictions. At present, only about 0.1 percent of the 3.3 million articles on the English Wikipedia are under edit protection. This tool should help reduce disruptive edits or errors to articles while maintaining open, collaborative editing from anyone who wants to contribute.

Posted on June 16, 2010 by mklang

Calvin minus Hobbes

Being a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes I was a bit skeptical about Jeff’s Ocean Calvin minus Hobbes when I first heard about it (via Neatorama) even though it worked pretty well with Garfield Minus Garfield… but this is so cool. Turning Calvin’s imaginary friend Hobbes back into a toy really is very touching

Posted on June 8, 2010 by mklang

No further comment needed

Eloquently argued by Xeni Jardinat Boing Boing Birds drenched in oil from BP spill: photo gallery

In the Boston Globe‘s “Big Picture” this week: A series of heartbreaking images by AP Photographer Charlie Riedel of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island. This is just the beginning of the destruction, and of the suffering and death for all manner of living things in the region. F*ck you, BP.

Posted on June 5, 2010 by mklang

The Corvette argument

Techdirt reports that a newspaper publisher is suing 22 websites for copyright violation. Nothing really new here except the action that these bad sites have carried out is quoting text (with links back to the original articles). Apparently they even used the “you wouldn’t steal a car, so why are you stealing my content” analogy:

Say I owned a beautiful 1967 Corvette and kept it parked in my front yard.

And you, being a Corvette enthusiast, saw my Vette from the street. You stopped and stood on the sidewalk admiring it. You liked it so much you called friends and gave them my address in case they also wanted to drive over for a gander.

There’d be nothing wrong with that. I like my ’67 Vette and I keep in the front yard because I like people to see it.

But then, you entered my front yard, climbed into the front seat and drove it away.

I’m absolutely, 100% not OK with that. In fact, I’m calling the police and reporting that you stole my car….

Yet, when it comes to copyrighted material — news that my company spends money to gather and constitutes the essence of what we are as a business — some people think they can not only look at it, but also steal it. And they do. They essentially step into the front yard and drive that content away.

Do they even believe what they are saying?

Posted on June 5, 2010 by mklang

University and Cyberspace

The upcoming conference University and Cyberspace: Reshaping Knowledge Institutions for the Networked Age is shaping up nicely and is looking to be an event to be reckoned with. Here is something from the blurb:

Universities are entrusted with the increasingly important responsibility of creating, sharing, and fostering use of knowledge on behalf of society, and to that end, are the recipients of tremendous investments of time, money, space, authority and freedom. Universities have embraced this role in diverse fashions, varying by tradition, period, and discipline, but we now ask them to go further. As we progress ever more deeply into a networked age, our knowledge institutions are faced with concomitant opportunities. They are challenged by society to become a driving force to create and disseminate knowledge – using innovative, effective, and dynamic approaches – derived from and for the networked world.

This multi-disciplinary conference is organised by NEXA Center for Internet & Society and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and is part of the COMMUNIA project and thanks to generous contributions the public-at-large will be able to attend.

Confirmed speakers include: Prof. Stefano Rodota (University of Rome), writer and futurologist Bruce Sterling, Prof. John Palfrey (Harvard Law School, author of “Born Digital”, one of the first studies on digital natives), Prof. Jef Huang (EPFL, architect), Prof. Terry Fisher (Harvard Law School). The final program will be made available by early June.

So I recommend that you are in Torino 28-30 June!

Posted on June 1, 2010 by mklang

Fame at last!

In December 2009 I wrote a positive text in my Swedish blog about the Norska Forbrukerrådet (Norwegian Consumer Council) and their decision to write a report and demand answers from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority on the role of social networking sites in relation to personal integrity. I ended the post with the words:

Detta är ett härligt exempel på socialt patos från en nationell aktör i en globaliserad nätbaserad värld.

Translated: This is a wonderful example of social pathos from a national actor in a globalized network-based world. Today I received an email from the Norska Forbrukerrådet. Partly they wanted to inform me that there report has been sent in:

Facebook operates in a virtually lawless sphere as far as data protection and terms of use are concerned. The terms and conditions are not made available and are subject to frequent changes by the company. The Consumer Council of Norway is therefore asking the Data Inspectorate to clarify what Facebook and other social networking sites can and cannot do under the law.

The complaint against Facebook/Zynga is here (in Norwegian) and their readable report on integrity & sociala medier is here (in English).

On a more personal note the mail contained some really cool news. The Consumer Council has taken the closing words from my original post and put them on a t-shirt! This must be my best quote ever.

Posted on May 31, 2010 by mklang

Free Culture Research Conference

The deadline for submissions of extended abstracts for the third Free Culture Research Conference (FCRC) is in 10 days. The conference this year will be in Berlin in October 8-9, 2010.

The Free Culture Research Conference presents a unique opportunity for scholars whose work contributes to the promotion, study or criticism of a Free Culture, to engage with a multidisciplinary group of academic peers and practitioners, identify the most important research opportunities and challenges, and attempt to chart the future of Free Culture. This event builds upon the successful workshop held in 2009 at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, organized and attended by renowned scholars and research institutions from the US, Europe and Asia. The first event was held in Sapporo, Japan, in 2008, in conjunction with the 4th iCommons Summit. This year’s event is larger in ambition and scope, to provide more time for interaction in joint as well as break-out sessions. It is hosted jointly by the Free University of Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and will take place at October 8-9, 2010 at the Free University Campus in Berlin, in collaboration with COMMUNIA, the European Network on the digital public domain. Funding and support is also provided by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Check out the full call for papers here. For the sake of full disclosure I am on the Program Committee but their are many impressive names on the committee.

Posted on May 27, 2010 by mklang

Great News for the Nordic Commons

Not only has Jonas done the work – he even wrote this blogpost which I happily & unashamedly steal. Great Work Jonas!

This is horribly exciting: I’ve been wanting to write more about this for a while now, but we wanted to time the release together with the Nordic Culture Fund. The short story, part of which I’ve leaked before, is that the Society for Free Culture and Software has been granted €49000 in funding for a project to bring Creative Commons to artists. Over the next year, from September 2010 to June 2011 we’ll be organising a series of workshops in some Nordic countries where we will talk about Creative Commons, how to use it, when to use it, and get as many artists as possible to make that first release with a Creative Commons license.

We’ll be organising workshops in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and on the Faroe Islands. The workshops themselves will be around April-May 2011, but we’re going to start already in September this year, and during FSCONS in November, to think about how to best approach newcomers to Creative Commons, prepare materials for the workshops and practice presenting Creative Commons to newcomers.

The society is working on this together with Smári McCarthy (IS), Birita í Dali (FO), Christian Villum (DK), Mathias Klang (SE) and Gisle Hannemyr (NO). The funding comes from Nordic Culture Fund and the Nordic Culture Point, and supplements funding which we’ve received for other projects. In total, we’ll spend around €60000 over the next year on CC activities.

Posted on May 25, 2010 by mklang