With the possible exception of weather data, the most successful open data set out there at the moment is transit data. It remains the data with which developers have experimented and innovated the most. Why is this? Because it’s been standardized. Ever since Google and the City of Portland creating the General Transit Feed Specification […]
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eaves.ca: Open Data Job Posting at MaRS in Toronto
The following job posting can be found on the MaRS website here. So here’s a job for an open data advocate living in, or willing to move to, Toronto. For the right person with the right vision, this could be about getting a group of organizations to open up their data to drive innovation and […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Visualizing how everything in Beijing is built at a Las Vegas scale
One of the things that struck me most about Beijing was the sheer size of everything. Beijing, it often seems, is built at a Las Vegas scale – the buildings, the roads, the airport – it’s all huge. The size can be deceptive when looking at a map, it is not unusual for a city […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Social Media and Rioters
My friend Alexandra Samuel penned a piece titled “After a Loss in Vancouver, Troubling Signals of Citizen Surveillance” over at the Harvard Business Review. The piece highlights her concern with the number of people willing to engage in citizen surveillance. As she states: It’s one thing to take pictures as part of the process of […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: How GitHub Saved OpenSource
For a long time I’ve been thinking about just how much Github has revolutionized open source. Yes, it has made managing the code base significantly easier but its real impact has likely been on the social aspects of managing open source. Github has rebooted how the innovation cycle in open source while simultaneously raising the […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: I can’t tweet or check Facebook…
… Because I’m behind the great firewall. It actually quite surreal being unable to check twitter – I didn’t realize I would miss it so much. However, I can apparently still blog so will have a post on Tuesday. Email & Share:
Continue readingeaves.ca: If the Prime Minister Wants Accountable Healthcare, let’s make it Transparent too
Over at the Beyond the Commons blog Aaron Wherry has a series of quotes from recent speeches on healthcare by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in which the one constant keyword is… accountability. Who can blame him? Take everyone promising to limit growth to a still unsustainable 6% (gulp) and throw in some dubiously costly […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: How the War on Drugs Destabilized the Global Economy
This is truly, truly fantastic. If you haven’t already read this stunning story from the Guardian: How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs. This is, in essence a chronicle how the dark and sordid side of banking and about how one US bank – Wachovia – essentially allowed Mexican drug […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Lost Open Data Opportunities
Even sometimes my home town of Vancouver gets it wrong. Reading Chad Skelton’s blog (which I frequently regularly and recommend to my fellow Vancouverites) I was reminded of the great work he did creating an interactive visualization of the city’s parking tickets as part of a series around parking in Vancouver. Indeed, it is worth […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Birthday, technology adoption and my happiness
Yesterday I was reminded by the fact that I have great friends – friends who are far better to me than I deserve. You see, yesterday was my birthday and I was overwhelmed with the number of well wishers who sent me a little note. I’m so, so lucky – something I should never forget. […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Review I want to Read of “What Technology Wants”
A few weeks ago I finished “What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly. For those unfamiliar with Kelly (as I was) he was one of the co-founders of Wired magazine and sits on the board of the Long Now Foundation. What Technology Wants is a fascinating read – both attracting and repulsing me on several occasions. […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Individualism in the networked world
Evolving thought: One of the large challenges of the 21st century is going to be reconciling our increasingly networked world with traditional notions of individualism. The more I look at a networked world – not in some geopolitical sense but on a day to day experience for everyone – the more it appears that many […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: How to Unsuck Canada’s Internet – creating the right incentives
This week at the Mesh conference in Toronto (where I’ll be talking Open Data) the always thoughtful Jesse Brown, of TVO’s Search Engine will be running a session title How to Unsuck Canada’s Internet. As part of the lead up to the session he asked me if I could write him a sentence or two […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Applications and Hardware Already Running On Open Data
Yesterday, Gerry T shared a photo he snapped at the University of Alberta in Edmonton of a “departure board” in the university’s Student Union building that uses open transportation data from the city’s website. Essentially the display board is composed of a simply application, displayed over a large flat screen TV turned vertically. It’s exactly […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: New York release road map to becoming a digital city
Yesterday, New York City released its “Road Map for the Digital City: Achieving New York City’s Digital Future.” For those who missed the announcement, especially those concerned about the digital economy, the future of government and citizen services, the document is definitely worth downloading and scanning. At the heart of the document sits a road […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: TorStar Op-ed: Liberals have to create a next political centre
This past Saturday the Toronto Star published the following piece by Taylor Owen and myself on its op-ed page. Thought I’d put it here for those who might have missed it. Liberals have to create a new political centre Canadians may have once valued the Liberal party, but they reject what it has become. The […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: An open letter to new MPs
Dear new MPs, Congratulations on being elected! You’ve every right to be excited – as a fellow Canadian who is hoping that the house can be changed, I’m excited too. You are the largest group of young MPs to hit the house in a long time. You’re also mostly from the same province (Quebec) and […]
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