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 […]
Meet the User – Pall Hilmarsson
Our digger has been driving around colder climes by one of our star users. Icelander Pall Hilmarrson. Driving such a heavy vehicle on icy surfaces and through volcanic ash may seem daunting to most people, but Pall has not only ventured forth undeterred, he has given passers-by a lift. One such hitch-hiker is Chris Taggart with his […]
Quickly get an HTML table
As I said before the Julian sometimes adds simple things to ScraperWiki, and nobody even notices them. He obviously learnt, as he ticketed in BitBucket that we needed to release this one. The External API can output data in several formats. jsondict is the standard JSON format using a dictionary for each row, jsonlist an alternative JSON format […]
We Eat Data – ScraperWiki talk at Open Knowledge Conference 2011
Our tamed computer programmer, ‘The Julian’, recently gave a rare appearance at the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin (if you want an appearance pay us or ask us!). The spectacle of such scraping royalty drew more people than the room could accommodate (‘The Julian’ is not related to any royals living or deceased). As such […]