Labs newsletter: 7 November, 2013

Posted on 07 November 2013 by Neil Ashton

There was lots of interesting activity around Labs this week, with two launched projects, a new initiative in the works, and an Open Data Maker Night in London.

Webshot: online screenshot service

webshot.okfnlabs.org, an online service for taking screenshots of websites, is now live, thanks to Oliver Searle-Barnes and Simon Gaeremynck.

Try it out with an API call like this:

http://webshot.okfnlabs.org/?url=http://okfnlabs.org&width=640&height=480

Read more about the development behind the service here.

Product Open Data Android app

The first version of the Android app for Product Open Data has launched, allowing you to conveniently look up open data associated with a product on your phone.

The source code for the app is available on GitHub.

Crowdcrafting for Public Bodies

PublicBodies.org aims to provide “a URL for every part of government”. Many entries in the database lack good description text, though, making them harder to use effectively. Fixing this would be a good use of CrowdCrafting.org, the crowd-sourcing platform powered by PyBossa.

Rufus suggests this start small and begin with EU public bodies. It should be easy to build a CrowdCrafting app to cover those, says Daniel Lombraña González. Friedrich Lindenberg thinks this approach could work for other datasets as well.

Discussion of this idea is still happening on the list, so jump in and say what you think—or help build the app!

Open Data Maker Night #6

The sixth Open Data Maker Night took place this past Tuesday in London. Open Data Maker Nights are informal events where people make things with open data, whether apps or insights.

This night’s focus was on adding more UK and London data to OpenSpending, and it featured special guest Max Ogden. It was hosted by the Centre for Creative Collaboration.

Our next Open Data Maker Night will happen in early December. If you want to organize your own, though, it’s super easy: just see the Open Data Maker Night website for help booting, promoting, and running the event.