Just a quick shout out to upcoming Open Data events crying out for participation from well minded coding citizens like yourselves: Open Australia and ScraperWiki Hackfest: In sunny down under (Sydney) on 10-11 September. No travel bursaries but it is free! Sign up here. It’s a hacking extravaganza for anyone interested in helping liberate data or […]
ScraperWiki Tutorial Screencast for Non-Programmers
If you’ve been going through our first ambitious tutorial and taster session for non-coders then good for you! I hope you found it enlightening. For those of you yet to try it, here it is. It is a step-by-step guide so please give it a go and don’t just try and follow the answers as […]
This one goes out to the ScraperWikians we love!
From business licenses in Islington (London, UK) to Oakland (Calinfornia, USA), councillors in India, presidential engagements in Ireland, newspapers in America and planning applications in Westoxon; here at ScraperWiki we are saluting our users who are looting the web of data for those in need. The Robin Hood’s of the data digging world! We have […]
Cupcakes, Conversation (of the business kind) and a Couple of ScraperWikians*
Scraping the web, liberating data, caging ‘The Julian’, it’s a thankless task so here at ScraperWiki we have a reward scheme existing of cupcakes (yes, we are a start up). So where better to have a business lunch with the local newspaper than the local cupcake joint. Read the online article by Alistair Houghton from the Liverpool […]
Meet the Minions – Young Rewired State
We’re an open platform and as with open door policies it’s hard to keep track of who’s come in. We’ve had an influx of youths. But no need to worry! There’ll be no loud music playing, hoody wearing, communicating in text message only on ScraperWiki. These are a pack of Young Rewired State. Here is […]
Meet the User – Claire Miller
Here at ScraperWiki we like programmers and journalists. We’re also interested in helping to bridge the gap, so with no further ado let me present to you: Claire Miller. She’s a reporter and data journalist for Media Wales. She’s come to ScraperWiki from the non-coding side but with a journalistic eye for the story. She’s new to […]
Meet the User – Ben Harris
Ben Harris is one of the few ScraperWikians I’ve come across that actually codes for a day job (I’m sure there’s lots, send them pizza). He’s a sysadmin (surprised a ninja/evangelist isn’t in some way attached to the title), which means he writes quite a lot of little hacky scripts to do useful things (just what […]
CIJ Workshop in Blog Form!
Here’s an introduction to a little thing called ScraperWiki. Please watch it so that you don’t develop bad habits that could annoy the programmers you want helping you! OBJECTIVES FOR THIS WORKSHOP Have your own ScraperWiki account and understand all the features and navigation of the site Scrape twitter for different terms and export the […]
An Ouseful Person to Know – Tony Hirst
We love to teach at ScraperWiki but we love people who teach even more. That being said, may I introduce you to Tony Hirst, Open University Lecturer and owner of this ‘ouseful‘ blog. He teaches at the Department of Communication and Systems and recently worked on course units relating to information skills, data visualisation and […]
Investigative Journalism, ScraperWiki style!
Just to let all hacks and journo hackers out there know, we’ll be running a ScraperWiki workshop at the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School. So get tickets whilst you can! The lineup looks amazing and the ScraperWiki gurus Nicola Hughes (@DataMinerUK) and Anna Powell-Smith (@darkgreener) will be at the summer school the whole time […]