Hello
Following Fiona's message about the Government public data competition, I was having a think about ideas to pull together data of cultural collections, memorials and heritage locations, perhaps with learning materials e.g. the Open University's courses that are presented for mashupability. But that's as far as I've got.
A Guardian article today picks up on a submitted idea to make a mashup of Blue Plaques with Google Maps and Wikipedia biographies. Tom Hunter (the MP behind this) says it's his favourite and he wants to make it happen. Another submitted idea is a map of war memorials. There is also an idea for a map of Creative Britain. The site doesn't mention any cultural heritage datasets but it does ask for suggestions.
I wondered if anyone else was cooking up similar ideas and wanted to share or develop them here. The prize money (only one prize at £20k) isn't a particularly hot draw so we may as well be collaborative about it.
I have a couple of questions:
- The Blue Plaque idea is quite simple. Do you think several different separate products work better than one big thing with lots of datasets feeding in?
- Do you have suggestions for cultural collection, learning resource & heritage location data that can be made available?
So, any thoughts bubbling away?
Bridget
Bridget McKenzie
Director, Flow Associates
[log in to unmask]
http://www.flowassociates.com
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Fiona Romeo
Sent: 02 July 2008 13:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Government-sponsored public data competition
The UK Government's 'Power of Information Taskforce' is running a competition, with a £20,000 prize fund, to encourage innovative uses of public data. They've released gigabytes of new data, including a neighbourhood statistics API.
http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/call/
Aside from the obvious opportunity to create a service that usefully combines government and museum data, this is yet another compelling example of the web services approach.
(Incidentally, I discovered this via a tweet from DowningStreet, http://twitter.com/DowningStreet/statuses/848358765)
Fiona
Fiona Romeo
Head of Digital Media
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Tel: 020 8312 6740
Email: [log in to unmask]
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