hacking

Unexpected Hurdles

Posted on: 14-09-2012

At a hackathon one of the participants made an application on car license plates and technical info about a car. The app requested information from a public sector body through their regular website form that provides that info. After a few hours the app stopped working. Apparently the cause was that the website automatically blocked multiple requests from the same IP address. As if it was placing a burden on their web traffic!

We circumvented it by using various different webservers to generate the requests to the gov website. So the app's requests looked like they were coming from...

Open Data Camp for Development Program Takes Shape

Posted on: 06-04-2011

Amsterdam, 05 April 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

On May 12 and 13th the Open Data for Development Camp will take place, organized by OpenforChange, the the Dutch network for transparency, collaboration and impact in development. This 2-day conference on open data in international development aid, will bring together a diverse crowd of development aid workers, policy-makers, researchers, journalists, IT staff, software developers and service providers:

* A round-table for...

Topic Report 'Local and Regional Data' Published

Posted on: 31-03-2011

Luxembourg, 31 March 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

A new Topic Report is now available, titled 'Local and Regional Data'. Written by Rob Davies, this is the 27th and final report produced under the 2009-2011 service contract for the ePSI platform. The series of regular reports will be continued in the coming 2 years.

This report describes the recent progress being made in improving access to local government data for re-use, catalyzed by Open Data initiatives, reflecting some...

Desafio AbreDatos Spanish Open Data Challenge

Posted on: 25-03-2011

Madrid, 25 March 2011,

(by Ton Zijlstra)

The second edition of the Desafío AbreDatos (Open Data Challenge) will take place in Spain on the weekend of May 7th-8th.
The contest aims to raise awareness about the potential of Open Data by having teams compete in developing services and applications using public data in only 48 hours. During AbreDatos 2010 almost 150 people in 50 teams took part, delivering in only two days 29 applications and getting...

13 Apps for Amsterdam in 1 Day

Posted on: 16-03-2011

Amsterdam, 12 March 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

Last weekend the annual 'Hack de Overheid' (hack the government, hacking meaning: making it better in easy to do ways) event took place in Amsterdam, joining forces this time with the Apps for Amsterdam competition. (See some of our photos)

Hack de Overheid is a series of events bringing coders and civil servants together to discuss PSI re-use and build applications...

Cool Swedish Apps in 24 Hours

Posted on: 13-09-2010

Stockholm, 13 September 2010

About 50 developers and those interested in re-using PSI came together in Stockholm on September 4th and 5th at the CoDemocracy event. In small teams they created several applications in 24 hours of work. Part of this event 'programming for democracy' were a few introductions on the state of play of PSI availability and re-use in Sweden, and issues with public transport data, as well as choosing the...

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