Op-ed

Infrequent notes on projects, publishing and platforms

#dublinbikesfail: Why government data needs to be publicly available via API

Dublin has a bike rental scheme now, delivered by outdoor ad house JC Decaux, in exchange for outdoor ad real estate on streets.

JC Decaux recently forced Fusio, a 3rd party, to withdraw their mobile app which told people where their nearest bike station was, bikes available, and other good stuff. A few feathers were spat.

Firstly, I'm surprised that people thought JC Decaux would be fine with a 3rd party using their data. They are a private concern; they exist to make money. Fusio were benefiting, by putting an app available for download which piggybacked on it. Yes, I realise that Fusio were not charging for it. But there were clear commercial benefits to them in offering a free app. They are not a bunch of hippies (warning: assumption) and also exist to make money. There are opportunity costs for JC Decaux as well.

The key point is: it looks like Dublin City Council did not understand that this was a public data project, or did not see the inherent value of making this clear in their agreements.

Metadata about the project (i.e. location of bike stations, available cycles, and free spots) should have been the property of Dublin City Council. Instead that information is obviously the property of JC Decaux.

Government bodies and agencies: please care about your data (by that I don't mean care about data protection, that's a given).

Curate, collate and make it available. If you make appropriate public data accessible via an open and well-documented API, the market will do the rest.

If you don't want to listen to me, maybe listen to Tim Berners-Lee instead, via his TED video or article on the topic. Or just have a look at what they are doing in the UK.

I haven't used those bikes yet, but they look nice and people seem to smile a lot on them. So that's good.

2009: web trends to watch

So here's the shorthand version of a piece I wrote for Business & Finance (Ireland). Just shortlisting a few trends for 2009.

  • Cloud computing for personal use will grow more pervasive. Business use is another issue entirely.
  • Open Data needs to be an eGovernment cornerstone. And it will happen. Slowly.
  • The mobile web is here and growing. Massive opportunity here, as long as people focus on context; it's not about fitting everything into small screens.
  • Social data ownership and portability will become bigger issues. But Facebook Connect will probably blow a disconnected Open Social movement away.
  • Data protection & security issues will enter the mainstream. Lose a smartphone and you'll discover it's not the device you care about. It's the data.
  • Advertising and content streams will begin to cross. Usable, useful advertising? Is that possible? Yes.
  • The top-down semantic web is happening and it will continue to grow. There is value to be made here in releasing previously walled-off content & services. People need to be more careful though.
  • Web applications will come forth and multiply: SaaS model is established now, with ad-supported models gaining traction. Some consolidation probably likely.
  • Ireland’s Knowledge economy needs attention. Needs to focus on the next billion people coming online, and how Ireland can be part of it. See an interesting post by Neil Leyden here on creating an International Content Services Centre.
  • Advertising will continue to move online. Budgets will get squeezed, but the percentage afforded to online advertising will continue to grow (disclaimer: I work for ICAN, an online advertising & digital communications agency, but them's just the facts: http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=online+advertising+trends)

The full article is in the 'Digital Connections' supplement, in this month's B&F.

SuperVisualize Me

Currentlly working on a couple of interesting web projects involving visualisation. The clients in question have huge information repositories, but are not unlocking their full value.

Visual representations of data, and relationships, are a method of unlocking this value. Just look at election coverage to see how vast reams of data get tamed visually. Google Analytics is another obvious example.

The work of information artist Jonathan Harris has been inspirational. The excellent Flowing Data is a great resource. ReadWriteWeb has a collection of tools. Edward Tufte demands more than just a mention; he's like a Data Representation God.