Open data comes to town (London,Ontario)

On July 21st 2010 The London Board of Control voted in favor of opening parks and recreation data. This is seen as the first step in the support of an open data initiative in London. What this means is that machine readable data will be made available to be used for web and mobile applications.

I imagine getting an e-mail alert a day before my garbage pickup. Many mornings I have got up to see the back of the garbage truck to realize that I did not put out my garbage. The potential for applications are huge. With data also comes the use of predictive analysis for you data mining geeks. Other Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver have embraced open data.

One current example of open data application is the website eatsure.ca website which displays health unit restaurant inspection information onto a clickable map. I look forward to more applications in the future.

For more information on open data you can check out this wikipedia's entry . Also, check out Tim Berners-Lee's TED conference on examples of using open data.

List of open source packages

I came across this list of free and open source software packages from wikipedia. It is quite a comprehensive list that has categories such as Science, Theology,Networking and Games.
Before purchasing a software I will definitely take a look at this list. Two software I currently use from this list are RSS Bandit and KeePass.
RSS Bandit I tried it after my previous RSS reader crashed too many times. RSS bandit is written in .NET and it syncs my Google Reader Account
KeePass I find useful to store and encrypt my passwords. You have the option to install on your PC or have it on a flash drive.

Due to the economic climate of 2008, some companies started to look to open source in a effort to reduce IT cost. Why not you ?

I still do not have a smart phone

In one of my earlier posts I had mentioned that I still own a compaq ipaq;however after no more software support (especially for new dates for daylight savings time) it was time to move on and say good bye.

Enter my ipod touch. Still no smart phone;however I can make skype-to-skype calls once I have wifi access. I am currently enjoying my ipod touch, especially the World Cup 2010 apps.

Will I be getting a smart phone ? Who knows, as ubiquitous computing becomming more and more pervasive chances are I will. It took me many years to move away from my compaq ipaq, so only time will how ubiqutous computing will evolve.