Articles by Hugh

I am a web-guy, writer, and participant in the open movement. I started LibriVox.org, and have a little software development company.

You can find me at http://hugmcguire.net.

toronto’s language quilt

January 9, 2008 in canada, datasets, maps by Hugh | Permalink

The Toronto Star has a big map of languages spoken in Toronto, using 2006 census data.

Bricoleururbanism.org, a wonderful blog, has digested some of the map images for you, and here is one:

toronto quilt

Via: Spacingmontreal.ca

Makes me think of a good question for schools and universities: why aren’t you guys doing this stuff in your classes and publishing it like crazy? Wouldn’t it be nice if a big chunk of school work was designed to be actually useful to the world, and actually was? And was distributed freely on the net?

history’s best charts (according to the economist)

December 30, 2007 in Art, datasets by Hugh | 1 comment

From the economist:

A good graphic can tell a story, bring a lump to the throat, even change policies. Here are three of history’s best…

They chose these 3:

  • Florence Nightingale’s chart of the causes of the deaths of soldiers in the Crimean war
  • Charles Joseph Minard’s chart of Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812
  • William Playfair’s chart of “weekly wages of a good mechanic” and the “price of a quarter of wheat” against monarchs.

death chart

[link…]

energy data and efficiency

December 21, 2007 in datasets by Hugh | Permalink

Dennis D. McDonald on data & energy use:

What kind of culture changes will be needed, I wonder, both for energy utility staff and for customers when customers are able to make a much more direct connection between the devices they use at home and their monthly bill? This change has the potential for making the customer-company relationship more interactive than it is now. This raises some interesting questions:

* Who is going to teach customers how to best manage their energy consumption?
* Will the energy company’s call center staff have to develop a new set of counseling and advice-giving skills?
* What new tools will control room staff need to monitor distribution network performance, and will these tools take into account human-supplied information alongside automatically-supplied data from the grid and its increasing number of sensors?

(via jon udell)

stephenson on transparency

December 21, 2007 in federal government, government by Hugh | Permalink

David Stephenson writes a great piece arguing for freeing government data:

I suspect my presentation today will be the first time many of you have heard of “transparent government.” It is an exciting new way of treating government data that will blossom as Web 2.0 apps, and what I call the Web 2.0 ethos of cooperation, become commonplace.Among other benefits, transparent government can:

* build public confidence in government
* improve the quality of public debate
* improve delivery of government services

and may even reduce the cost of those services.

[more…]

(via jon udell)

communia

December 12, 2007 in policy, projects by Hugh | Permalink

New project funded by the EU, Communia, from the about:

The main goal of the COMMUNIA project is to build a network of organisations that shall become the single European point of reference for high-level policy discussion and strategic action on all issues related to the public domain in the digital environment, as well as related topics such as alternative forms of licensing for creative material (including, but not limited to, Creative Commons licenses), open access to scientific publications and research results, management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works).

>

Canada’s Copyright Bill Coming

December 4, 2007 in canada, federal government by Hugh | 1 comment

There have been some waves on the web about Canada’s expected copyright legislation. For some info, see:

I just sent a letter (as a private citizen) to a number of pols, including my MP and Industry Minister Jim Prentice:

Dear Minister Prentice:

I am disturbed by the Government’s announcement that a new copyright bill will be tabled in December, without any public consultation. Copyright is a crucial issue for Canadian competitiveness – in education, science, business, and culture. All indications are that overly restrictive copyright laws stifle innovation, yet this is exactly what the Government appears to be tabling. A restrictive copyright bill could have disastrous effects on the future of the country.

The most important problem is that the Government is tabling a bill without consultations with Canadians, so that a full range of voices has not been heard. This means that the best decision cannot be made, and instead narrow interests of those who *do* have the Government’s ear are likely to trump what is good for the future of the country.

The bill, apparently, is likely to include anti-circumvention provisions (digital locks on machines so that using the things Canadians buy, the way they wish to use them will be illegal). These provisions have proved to create significant harm to education, privacy protection, security, research, free speech, and consumer interests.

The bill does not address crucial issues such as protecting parody, time shifting, device shifting, and the making of backup copies. Further, it does not address outdated and innovation-stifling crown copyright, or restrict statutory damages awards to cases of commercial infringement.

The government last consulted Canadians on digital copyright issues in 2001. The Internet and technology use have changed dramatically since then, yet the Government has done little – that I am aware of – to find out what implications these changes have on Canadians. On businesses, on teachers, on regular people.

As a small web business owner, I am shocked that the Government would charge ahead on such important legislation without doing the work required to understand the implications properly, without doing the work required to find out how it will impact Canadians, and what it is that Canadians actually want.

Please reconsider this dangerous approach.

Best regards,
etc.

crimereports.com

December 2, 2007 in audio, projects, tools by Hugh | Permalink

Listen to Jon Udell talking to: “Greg Whisenant, founder of CrimeReports.com, wants every city to make its crime data usefully available to citizens in the same kinds of ways that ChicagoCrime.org famously does.”

cities of knowledge conference – dublin

November 18, 2007 in conference, government, infrastructure, policy, projects by Hugh | Permalink

If you are in Dublin, the Cities of Knowledge conference on November 20 looks interesting:

Cities of Knowledge
An International eGovernment/Public Sector Knowledge Management event, co-organised by Dublin City Council and DIT.

The event is part of ICiNG (Innovative Cities for the Next Generation) which is a project funded through the European 6th Framework Research programme. It aims to develop effective e-communities and e-access to city administration.

The project is based in Dublin, Barcelona, and Helsinki. Each city is providing ‘City Laboratory’ test-bed sites in strategic development/city regeneration locations where users will trial and evaluate technologies and services.

Speakers include:
Jon Udell, Technology Evangelist, Microsoft
Graham Colclough, Vice President, Capgemini
Martin Curley, Head of Innovation, Intel
Prof John Ratcliffe, DIT Futures Academy
Mark Wardle, Head of Innovation Programmes, BT

The agenda is here.

free our data in parliament (UK)

November 15, 2007 in Uncategorized by Hugh | Permalink

The inspirational Free Our Data blog out of the UK reports on a mention of their efforts in Parliament, where Mark Todd, MP had this to say in argument against:

I should like briefly to comment on the free our data campaign [our emphasis], which has suggested that the correct path is to distribute Government data virtually for free, or at cost. The difficulty of that model, which relies on the argument that that would generate substantial economic growth and tax revenues that would easily repay the amount lost in revenues directly associated with the sales, is that I am afraid it places a substantial reliance on any Government—not just this one—to continue to fund the development and maintenance of the quality of data in those organisations. At the moment, the organisations have revenue streams on which they can rely to invest into the future. Simply relying on the Treasury to bury its hand into its pocket periodically to develop data into the future is wishful thinking. That is not the path down which we should be treading.

More of the debate can be found here.

Open Database License (Draft)

November 3, 2007 in openmovement, resources, tools by Hugh | Permalink

Open Database License (Draft):

This is a beta release, or a draft version of the licence, for comment and criticism by communities interested in licensing databases using copyleft, open content, and related licensing schemes. Distribution of this draft licence does not create an attorney-client relationship. This information is provided ‘as is‘, and this site makes no warranties on the information provided. Any damages resulting from its use are disclaimed.

From opencontentlawyer.com (thanks to James Duncan).

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