Adventures In E-Everything

 A long time ago in another world my wife and I produced and presented a podcast focused on the Free and Open Source Software world. Running for almost two years in a couple of different incarnations, we were able to have a lot of fun while at the same time we were able to help inform people and dig down into some of the really juicy stories of the day.

 Let's see, the last time I posted a blog here, I was giving the Royal Post a deserved kicking for their overly restrictive control of the postcode information relied upon by third party services such as Planning Alerts UK. 

This time round I bring good news from Merry Old England. 

A while back I blogged about the fact that the Royal Mail had shutdown a third-party provider of post code information Ernest Marples. Well as with all things there were knock on effects.
 

The South Australian Government has announced that it's going to be creating an Open Technology Foundation. From it's vision statement:
The OTF is committed to the evaluation and where proven, uptake of open technologies, standards and methods.

The OTF exists to help governments make better, more cost effective and innovative use of open technologies in order to improve service delivery to citizens.

You know I half expected to see this sort of story from here in Australia rather than the UK.

From this story the Royal Mail has moved to prevent a third party service from providing an API with up to date Postcode information sourced directly from the Royal Mail itself. This action has had a domino effect, causing issues with those sites that had come to rely on the third party service.

You know what I love about the whole public discussion thing? It makes things happen, in public even.

A few days ago I blogged my concerns about the contract that those who were successful in tendering for Gov2 Taskforce projects were expected to sign. I still have those concerns, however since then there has been an ongoing discussion between the Gov2 Taskforce, Microsoft and the community about the best way to move forward.

Now that I've had my say on the Draft Contract I thought I would extend my congratulations to the Gov2 Taskforce for the launch of mashupaustralia.org
Mashup Australia looks like a JFDI effort on behalf of the Gov2 Taskforce. Instead of getting bogged down in the endless discussions about risks/benefit analysis they've gone ahead and sourced a variety of different datasets, setup a competition and gone ahead and Done It.
Well done.

So the Gov2 Taskforce has released the contract that everyone who wishes to participate in any Gov2 Taskforce projects has to sign. Fair enough, no one expected it to be carte blanch.

While we're still waiting with bated breath for the details of the NSW Governments Apps4NSW competition, it appears that the NSW Government has released the first Dataset for third party use.

The Transport Data Exchange Programme is a programme to allow third party developers to build applications based on the Timetable and Service information released by the various Public Transport operators.

Below is a quick OOOG Review of the programme:

Open Source: 5

I'll admit it I have a need to play with new toys. If I see something cool and shiny I will sit down with it, take it apart and then try and put it back together. If I'm lucky I discover something I can use in my work or home life, if not then it's been a bit of fun and I've learnt something new.

I've been doing this pulling apart and putting back together with the Google Wave stuff for a little while now, and seriously I'm very blown away. However I have also been playing with new shiny thing called status.net.