Hey – my name is Ed Cawthorne and I have recently started with ScraperWiki as the resident product manager. My first task is to let you know about the “Search for Tweets” tool on the new ScraperWiki platform. To understand how the Twitter tool came about, it is useful to understand some of the background. […]
Uploading a (structured) spreadsheet
We’ve made a new tool to help you upload a structured spreadsheet. That is to say, one that contains a table with headers. I’m trying it out with an old spreadsheet of expenses from when I worked at mySociety. If your spreadsheet isn’t consistent enough, it tells you where you’ve gone wrong. In my case, I […]
Sharing in 6 dimensions
Hands up everyone who’s ever used Google Docs. Okay, hands down. Have you ever noticed how many different ways there are to ‘share’ a document with someone else? We have. We use Google Docs at lot internally to store and edit company documents. And we’ve always been baffled by how many steps there are to […]
What Does It All Mean? Find out with Summarise This Data
Every time I generate a new dataset, the first thing I want is a high-level overview of what’s going on. I can’t digest millions of individual rows of data – I need a way to zoom-out and get the bigger picture of what’s going on. Take the table below which shows all the National Trust […]
Open your data with ScraperWiki
Open data activists, start your engines. Following on from last week’s announcement about publishing open data from ScraperWiki, we’re now excited to unveil the first iteration of the “Open your data” tool, for publishing ScraperWiki datasets to any open data catalogue powered by the OKFN’s CKAN technology. Try it out on your own datasets. You’ll […]
Scraping for kittens
Like most people who possess a pulse and an internet connection, I think kittens are absurdly cute and quite possibly the vehicle in which humanity will usher in an era of world peace. I mean, who doesn’t? They’re adorable. I was genuinely curious as to what country has the cutest kittens. I therefore decided to […]
Publish from ScraperWiki to CKAN
ScraperWiki is looking for open data activists to try out our new “Open your data” tool. Since its first launch ScraperWiki has worked closely with the Open Data community. Today we’re building on this commitment by pre-announcing the release of the first in a series of tools that will enable open data activists to publish […]
Data analysis using the Query with SQL tool
Ferdinand Magellan, the Renaissance’s most prodigious explorer. He almost certainly knew lingua franca – but did he know SQL?It’s Summer 1513. Rome is the centre of the Renaissance world, and Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese merchant ships criss-cross the oceans, ferrying textiles from the North, spices from the East, and precious metals from the newly-discovered Americas. […]
Quick start guide: Make your first data tool
The new ScraperWiki is all about tools, like a hammer rather than a washing machine. For data scientists and developers we’ve made a new quick start guide, that takes you through making your first tool. We’re looking forward to seeing what kind of tools you make!
Tools liberate your data from apps
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, […]