OpenBlock

Just a few nice new things added to the public views lately: police reports restaurant inspections (browseable by violation type too) added a map to the filter pages.

Hacks and Hackers Meet for Geo-Based Discussions [video] | Bostinnovation: Boston Innovation and Tech News Blog Nice post + video from this past Saturday’s Hyper-local / OpenBlock hackathon at the MIT Media Lab that we co-organized with Hacks/Hackers Boston.

Today is the OpenBlock + Hacks/Hackers Hyper-local Hackathon at MIT.  There are about 25 people here hacking on OpenBlock and brainstorming what should & could be in the land of hyper-local news & data.  Fun!

The Boston Hacks/Hackers Meetup is hosting a hackathon for building apps based on OpenBlock, to “figure out what cool things we can do with Boston data”, as Joel from the Globe puts it.  Even if you don’t live in Boston, it might be worth a trip if ... [More] you’re interested in hacking with OpenBlock. The hackathon will be October 30 from noon to 8pm, at the new MIT Media Lab building, which is a really interesting place!  Sponsored by the Knight News Challenge.For more info, see http://meetupbos.hackshackers.com/calendar/15033657/ [Less]

Everything you wanted to know about the Knight News Challenge - Hacks/Hackers Boston Meetup: Nick Grossman of Open Plans will be talking about OpenBlock at the Neiman Journalism Lab on Tuesday 10/19 at 6pm. (Also on the bill are Jenny 8. Lee, one of the judges, and John Davidow of WBUR, a past winner)

Another openblock demo update yesterday. What’s new this week: Better Boston neighborhood boundaries (now visible on maps!) Zip codes added too Some admin UI fixes (not visible to the public). Several 500 and 404 errors fixed We’ve turned on ... [More] aggregate statistics on news type summary pages. This gives you a nice overview of when and where each type of news is happening. Also lots of minor documentation tweaks and installer fixes. [Less]

Luke and I updated http://demo.openblockproject.org today. Notable new things: We’re now displaying issues from SeeClickFix We’re now running Django 1.2 Blocks data fixed, we were missing a ton of Boston blocks before. You can’t see it without an ... [More] admin account, but the django-admin interface is now starting to be functional. We hope to update the demo frequently, at least once a week. Maybe it’ll be a regular Thursday event. [Less]

Last week, Paul, Nick and I met with folks from The Columbia Tribune and The Boston Globe to talk about what we’ve learned about OpenBlock so far, and to talk more about their plans for putting the OpenBlock software to use.  I think their ideas are ... [More] going to be great for the project — both will push things ahead in interesting and complementary ways.  For the Globe, we’ll be focusing on improving APIs for using OpenBlock as a service.  For the Tribune, we’ll be improving OpenBlock as a standalone site. The demo is more of a sandbox for exploring what OpenBlock should be out-of-the-box.  We’ll be updating the demo with the current state of the software every week along with a post here about what’s new, what’s fixed and generally how things are going. Any way you use it, you need a bunch of local data to make OpenBlock do its thing.  To get the ball rolling, we’ve set up a data wiki page to help document the different types of data OpenBlock needs and what works well today.  We also hope to record what we (and you) learn about getting ahold of good data — we think knowing who to ask and what to ask for is a big part of the challenge. Although things are at an early stage, if you’re willing to squint a little, I think you can already see the shape of what’s to come.  When you check it out, don’t hesitate to voice what you’re seeing — What do you imagine doing with OpenBlock? What sort of data do you want to pull in? [Less]

Tech survey: installation options: We want to come up with an OpenBlock installation strategy that will get the software into the hands of as many news organizations as possible. If you work for a newspaper or other news outlet that is interested in OpenBlock, please fill out the survey!

We’ve started planning out our road map. Take a look at http://developer.openblockproject.org/roadmap for an overview of where we’re headed.  Subject to change, of course.