Browsing the archives for the open data category

2011-2012 Garbage Collection Calendar iCalendar Files Released

The 2011-2012 Garbage Collection Calendar iCal files are ready for download! As my contribution to 2010′s Open Data Ottawa Hackfest, I converted the City of Ottawa’s Garbage Collection Calendar into a open format (iCalendar) so that the schedule could be used for purposes like being imported into your favourite calendaring application such as MS Outlook, [...]

OC Transpo GPS Data Debacle

OC Transpo is in the news again today.  Ottawa’s mainstream media has picked up the story about the pilot of the OC Transpo GPS data feed being pulled offline in January.  It seems that a chance for the transit service to make a profit from mobile applications is taking precedence over the availability of open [...]

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City of Toronto Releases Council’s Attendance and Voting Records in Open Format

I was just discussing this week with a few colleagues my general disappointment in “low-value” datasets that our local government in Ottawa have been releasing as part of their open data catalogue.  It contains, for the most part, static datasets.  (Some of the transportation data that is now coming out is a welcome addition.) I [...]

Apps4Ottawa: Voting Has Begun

The Ottawa Open Data Application Contest, Apps4Ottawa, moved into its voting phase yesterday.   There are 100 applications created by the community using data from the city’s open data catalogue, or by scraping data from the city website. From now until January 28th, please go to the Apps4Ottawa site to vote for your favourite applications. [...]

Should your online data belong to you?

Should your online data belong to you? This question was posed to LinkedIn users in a poll today (see the poll results here, if you’re a LinkedIn user.) The choices given in this multiple choice poll are: Yes, absolutely No, if it’s online then I’ve got no control Yes and no, it’s complicated. Yes, but [...]

City of Ottawa to Release Election Results as Open Data

The City of Ottawa has announced that election results will be provided in an open format through their Open Data Catalogue on voting day, October 25th, 2010. The results will be made available starting at just after 8pm, when the polls close, and will be updated every 10 minutes. This is great news for advocates [...]

How Open Data is Changing Municipal Government Services

I just watched a great video by David Eaves, discussing how the implementation of Open Data in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has already fostered the creation of applications that are making an impact on the city. If you’re wondering why your city should support Open Data, watch this video.

Ottawa Supports Open Data

The open data community in Ottawa has a reason to celebrate this morning.  Ottawa City Council has given the green light to the release of municipal datasets in open formats, with the launch of their data catalogue, officially still in beta at www.ottawa.ca/opendata. The terms of use for these datasets is for “world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive [...]

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Ottawa Garbage Calendars Project Update

Thank to you those who have sent me words of encouragement with regards to the Ottawa Garbage Collection iCalendar Project. I decided to change the way the calendars are produced.  Instead of having a calendar for each zone (4 zones in total) containing bilingual data, the iCalendar files now produce separate files for each day [...]

Open Data Ottawa: Garbage Collection Calendars

Open Data April 24th is the Ottawa Open Data Hackfest.  Their website describes Open Data as: It’s about unrestricted access to the same public data already sitting in city hall in a format easy for Internet applications to consume. We’re talking about easy access to bus schedules, restaurant inspection reports, childcare locations, crime stats, special [...]

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