foi – Podnosh

These are my links for February 4th through February 6th:

Penval – News – "Earlier this week my local council announced that it was seeking European funding for wireless infrastructure in the rural “not spots” in the County. I believe that this is the wrong approach, not that I don’t understand the motivation because rural businesses get to the point where anything will do, but I still believe it’s wrong."
The Social Business: *Other vehicles to create social change are available – I'd be right behind a Social Business Mark which was awarded to businesses which have clear social aims, and which provide externally verified evidence of their impacts. I'd even be happy if the businesses which had certain "social enterprise" structures got a further tick in the box. But given that my interest is in social change, and is not ideologically driven by a dislike of profit distribution, I am finding it hard to get enthusiastic about the Social Enterprise Mark.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Blogging: a great pastime for the elderly – "blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet"
Your Right To Know » Blog Archive » Bad-mouthing FOI – "I’ll be keeping my eye out for any FOI bad-mouthers in the future and if you know of any please do let me know"
Yet another UK Hyperlocal Directory… but this time it’s open data « countculture – Most importantly, I thought the directory should be open data which could be reused by anyone and not just by the person or company running the directory.

These are my links for October 26th through October 31st:

mySociety » Blog Archive » Harassment problem leads to FOI strangeness – Interesting story about how government departments are making quite subjective judgements about which information to release through FOI: "Today we have a strange story about a department that appears to think that it has a duty not to release information under FOI if it makes people angry."
We Share Stuff – Accredited course in Social Media – A triumph for wesharestuff: "We’re really pleased to announce what we think is the first officially accredited course in understanding and using social media for those with no previous experience. We Share Stuff has developed the course and it’s now part of the OCN framework (WSS are an OCN Centre), as three units of 10 learning hours each."
Data is what we want – but why? – Birmingham Post – Business Blog – Paul Bradshaw explains in simple terms: "The best analogy I can think of is polymers. When the technology behind polymers was developed in the last century, it created a whole new market – innovative producers could create new products, and cheaper ways of producing old products. Similar opportunities are available with the release of data – release postcodes for businesses to use cheaply or for free, and you have the opportunity for new businesses creating applications based on location. Release transport data and others can tell you which direction to head in for the next bus."
Blog | Birmingham Conservation Trust – Really interesting film about The highline – a community campaign to save an old elevated railways line in New York as a green park. Fascinating ideas about how to galvanise community.
Green shoots of recovery – Birmingham Post – Lifestyle Blog – Kate Copper: "The accidental empires of the 20th century weren't forged in workshops (not even facilitated ones), but in back bedrooms, unused garages and fusty university research labs. At the forefront of this revolution were pizza-fed, caffeine-fuelled nerdy boys who couldn't get a date. These brainy T-shirted lads did weird math, challenged their mates to do even weirder stuff — not in order to make money or lead a revolution, but simply to explore what it was that they could do."

Tag: foi

Stuff I've seen February 4th through to February 6th

Stuff I've seen October 26th through to October 31st