Tag: Help Me Investigate

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

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."

Stuff I've seen August 28th through to August 31st

These are my links for August 28th through August 31st:

  • 15 Unconventional Uses of WordPress – "In this article we will highlight some of the most unconventional uses of WordPress and show you how you can use WordPress in these unconventional way as well." via @problogger
  • Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text | Wired Science | Wired.com – Neat way forward to what we think we can rely on, colur coding the wikpedia stiff that is form people we trust and survives: “They’ve hit on the fundamentally Darwinian nature of Wikipedia,” said Wikipedia software developer and neuroscientist Virgil Griffith of the California Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the project. “Everyone’s injecting random crap into Wikipedia, and what people agree with more often sticks around. Crap that people don’t like goes away.”
  • Clive Thompson on the New Literacy – "technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions."
  • BBC – Peston’s Picks: What future for media and journalism? – Robert Peston: "the blog is at the core of everything I do, it is the bedrock of my output. The discipline of doing it shapes my thoughts."
  • Access Space Overview & Site Map – Sheffield – "Access Space is the UK’s first free media lab: an open-access learning community where participants learn, create and communicate online. Participation empowers individuals and develops skills, community, creativity and resourcefulness."
  • New feature: custom locations / The EveryBlock Blog – Draw your own neighbourhood: "As a neighborhood news site, we try to maintain accurate lists of neighborhoods and their boundaries, but we're inevitably incomplete. Neighborhoods change, areas get renamed and redeveloped, and even the most well-established districts can have ambiguous boundaries. (In fact, some argue that neighborhoods have no true boundaries, only centers, but a computer needs to be able to draw the line somewhere.)" Via @dominiccampbell

A quick link about Help Me Investigate, collaboration and journalism

  • Journalism.co.uk :: Help Me Investigate: How working collaboratively can benefit journalists – Birmingham Post reporter Tom Scotney reflects on the first story he wrote as a result of working with Help Me Investigate (I’m one of three people behind the site): “what’s most important when working like this is to recognise that you’re part of a process, not the end result of it. Which means giving credit where it’s due, getting the facts right, and making clear in the article the process by which it was created. All the sort of things that ought to be standard practice for a reporter anyway, but are more crucial then ever when using a source like this. And the risks are higher – get things wrong and you not only look stupid, but also like you’re stealing the work of others. So there’s no room for complacency – but get it right and you’re becoming part of an investigative team that’s bigger, more diverse and more skilled than any newsroom could ever be.”

Stuff I've seen August 14th through August 15th

These are my links for August 14th through August 15th: