A final Hacks & Hackers report to end 2010! Happy Christmas from everyone at ScraperWiki! Earlier this month ScraperWiki put on its first ever student event, at Liverpool John Moores University in partnership with Open Labs for students from both LJMU’s School of Journalism and the School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences, as well as […]
Scraping PDFs: now 26% less unpleasant with ScraperWiki
Got a PDF you want to get data from? Try our easy web interface over at PDFTables.com! Scraping PDFs is a bit like cleaning drains with your teeth. It’s slow, unpleasant, and you can’t help but feel you’re using the wrong tools for the job. Coders try to avoid scraping PDFs if there’s any other option. But […]
Belfast Hacks & Hackers – the video
As we’ve previously reported, the Belfast Hacks and Hackers Hack Day in November was a great success with some brilliant projects emerging, and we’re thrilled to post this video, courtesy of the School of Media, Film and Journalism at the University of Ulster. Enjoy! Hacks and Hackers Hack Day Belfast short film, by Eleaner Mulholland […]
Hacks & Hackers RBI: The video
Media reporter Rachel McAthy has produced this excellent video from last month’s Hacks & Hackers Hack Day at RBI. View it on Journalism.co.uk, or below. More on the event at this link.
Hacks & Hackers RBI: Snow mashes, truckstops and moving home
Sarah Booker (@Sarah_Booker on Twitter), digital content and social media editor for the Worthing Herald series, has kindly provided us with this guest blog from the recent Scraperwiki B2B Hacks and Hackers Hack day at RBI. Pictures courtesy of RBI’s Adam Tinworth. Dealing with data is not new to me. Throughout my career I have […]
Hacks and Hackers Dublin: Data and the Dail
[Video: courtesy of Cathal Furey and Dave Gunnigan.] “Dublin can be heaven, at a quarter past eleven and a stroll in Stephens Green, there’s no need to worry, there’s no need to hurry, you’re a king and the lady’s a queen…” Onwards and downwards we headed towards Dublin, as part of our UK & Ireland […]
Belfast Hacks & Hackers: a roundup
November was a hectic month so the blog posts have been a little tardy – apologies! After a full hacks and hackers day with the wonderful crowd in Lichfield #hhhlich we set off and sailed overnight to Belfast with a full force gale – force 11 to be precise! The Titanic memorabilia available on board […]
Hacks & Hackers Belfast: ‘You don’t realize how similar coding and reporting are until you watch a hack and a technologist work together to create something’
In November, Scraperwiki went to Belfast and participant Lyra McKee, CEO, NewsRupt (creators of the news app Qluso) has kindly supplied us with this account! The concept behind Hacks and Hackers, a global phenomenon, is simple: bring a bunch of hacks (journalists) and hackers (coders) together to build something really cool that other journalists and […]
Views part 1 – Canadian weather stations
(This is the first of two posts announcing ScraperWiki “views”. A new feature that Julian, Richard and Tom worked away and secretly launched a couple of months ago. Once you’ve scraped your data, how can you get it out again in just the form you want? See also: Views part 2 – Lincoln Council committees) Canadian […]
Hacks/Hackers London
First of all, the Iraq War Logs: Round One – The Cleaning Documents, records and words all hugely intimidating in their vastness. But some tools to help are MySQL, Ultraedit and Google Refine. But this stage is incredibly frustrating. Round Two – The Problem How do you tackle the types of documents? There was even […]