An app is something that makes it easy for a user to achieve one thing.

It’s an appliance. Like a washing machine.

On the new ScraperWiki platform we talk a lot about tools.

A tool is something you use with materials and with other tools to achieve a variety of things.

Like a hammer.

At ScraperWiki, we’re all about liberating data. Data is the material.

Sometimes it is nice to be trammelled into the ways of a particular app, in return for it being easy to use.

In other cases, you want to do more: invent your own analyses, visualisations and alerts, not just use the same ones your competitors are using. Mix together data from multiple apps, which the creators had never intended to be used together.

In the original ScraperWiki, we helped you do that, if you had the time and desire to learn to program.

In new ScraperWiki, our ultimate aim is to help anyone work with their data the way they want to.

To get data.

And to use it.