So, I’ve been a little bit quiet over the whole Barcamp transparency thing in recent months for one reason or another – but not because nothing has been happening!

As the UK enters into an election year, and with legislation such as the infamous Digital Economy Bill being rushed through parliament, and all parties promising to clean up politics, 2010 looks to be an exciting year for transparency related issues.

I am therefore delighted to confirm that Barcamp Transparency will be happening again later this year, with more speakers, more interesting conversations and more beer afterwards!

Transparency isn’t just a hot topic in the UK of course, so we are currently actively putting together plans for holding similar events elsewhere in the world.  If you would be interested in helping out, please get in touch!

Finally, it has come to light from the conversations that we have been having that there is a need for an online community space to help organise these events and let people from around the world discuss and collaborate on transparency related issues.

Therefore, I am delighted to say that we are currently putting this together and that Ben Werdmuller (of Elgg fame) has agreed to become our Community Manager!

Get in touch and let us know what you want to see in the future!

There was a small ripple around the internet this morning caused by the Home office opening up the Beta terrorist reporting tool.

To what extent the reports from this tool are monitored is unclear, but I suspect this will cause more problems that it solves.

Even before we consider the rather broad definition the government has for illegal material (which on the face of it could cover a number of science and religious texts), I can see the tool quickly becoming buried under false positives – whether through over sensitive citizens or through plain vindictiveness – which would need to be investigated.

Even if no further action is taken after the investigation, the cost in both time and resources must surely represent a significant risk that things that are actually a threat will be missed.

Today saw the release of Data.gov.uk, the government data website spearheaded by Tim Berners-Lee which hopes to collate government data and make it available for people to build on.

Although it is clearly aimed at developers, it is my hope that innovative and genuinely useful tools will quickly start popping up as entrepreneurs get to grips with this new wealth of information.

The launch has triggered a fair amount of buzz, and a flurry of blog posts elsewhere which do a much better job at explaining the ins and outs of the site than I have time to.

Personally, I think this is a good step in the right direction. It is also good to see that they have opted to go ugly early – publishing the raw data so we can begin hacking straight away – rather than wait until their cathedral-like semantic web interface is perfect.

True, while the data is in this state it is not so useful to the wider world – yet. Projects such as Scores on the doors have proven that turning raw data into something useful can be a useful and profitable undertaking, so I’ve no doubt that this will change.

The biggest disappointment is the choice to release much of the data under crown copyright. While this was almost certainly a compromise to get anything to happen at all, it would have been nice if the government had taken the bolder step and released it unencumbered and let the economy profit from it.

I would also like to see more local authorities opening up their data, moving away from the idea that everything has to be centralised.

Still, the new site follows a general positive trend of data glasnost which has already seen the promise to open up the postcode database, and in that spirit I welcome it.

Image “New, Improved *Semantic* Web!” by Duncan Hull

I have just written a very small Akismet plugin for Elgg.

When enabled and configured, this plugin will scan newly submitted comments of the ‘generic_comment’ annotation class.

While spam comments are rarer on Elgg due to the fact that most sites don’t allow anonymous comments, this could be useful for people who are getting spam comments from people who have signed up.

This plugin comes into its own when you allow anonymous comments, such as on a site I recently built for a client.

Extending this plugin to scan other content should be fairly straight forward for even a novice coder, but if I have time I’ll provide an interface to do so.

Anyway, go get it here, or check out the project page on google code!

Image “Spam! [don't buy]” by David Trattnig

On Tuesday 12 a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti causing near total destruction and widespread loss of life.

Estimates of the death toll vary from 30,000-100,000 casualties, with most news agencies picking the figure of 50,000 casualties on the first day.

To put this figure into some kind of context, that’s:

• 10 times the number of coalition deaths in Iraq from the start of the war to present.
• 17 times the number of people who died in the September 11th attacks in New York.
• 66 times the total number of people killed or injured in the 7/7 London tube bombings.
• Or the death of one person in every three in the City of Oxford (where I live – population ~151,000 living within the district boundary)

This figure is certain to rise as many have been left without shelter, food, water or basic healthcare.

Aid charities and NGOs from around the world are mobilising, and I encourage you to help if you can.

Here are just a few:

1. The British Red Cross
2. Oxfam
3. Medecins Sans Frontieres

Image from the BBC world service.