Author: Rolf

"World Bank Institute: We’re also the data bank"

At the Activate Conference, Aleem Walji of the World Bank Institute gave a brief overview about their first experiences with open data (their data catalogue website gets more visitors than their home page now, and Google translated the top indicators …
Rolf 0 Comments

Open for discussion: the "Open for Change" Manifesto

Ever since we started networking as “development 2.0 pioneers”, we wanted to express our core values, so we can grow our network into a movement.
In January we adopted the name “Open for Change”, and worked to organise the world’s first “Open Data for …
Rolf 0 Comments

Getting my GSM modem working under Ubuntu

Add new GSM connectionAnother “hack post”, to capture how I got mobile broadband working on my Sony laptop. Sony makes laptops with cutting-edge features (small, solid-state disk, full HD screen) and a stylish look, but doesn’t like to help you take full advantage of it unless you’re on Windows. Undocumented tweaks to the hardware, hard-to-find technical information, and so on.

I bought a Sony VPCZ1 (to be more precise: VPCZ13C5E) with a WWAN module installed, with the idea that I could be online anywhere, without any dongles sticking out, or having to connect by tethering it to my phone over Bluetooth or USB. I’ll pay the extra fee… provided it works.

I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 (which was an effort in itself), and went on an excursion to get mobile broadband running.

Rolf 0 Comments

Participate in ODDC: in Amsterdam… or online!

The list of people signing up for the Open Data for Development Camp is growing. We’ll have people involved in defining the International Aid Transparency Initiative standards, people involved in making development data open in governments and organis…
Rolf 0 Comments

Open Data for Campaigning

Two weeks ago was the Ecampaigning Forum (ECF) organised by Fairsay in Oxford, and directly after that, the Open Data for Campaigning Camp (ODCC) put together by Tim Davies, Javier Ruiz and myself. One direct result of our efforts to promote the use o…
Rolf 0 Comments

Accessing aid information

IATIInternational Aid Transparency InitiativeThe international development aid sector is starting to get on board the "open data" train. Preparing for the Open Data for Campaigning Day in Oxford in three weeks, and our own Open Data for Development Camp in Amsterdam in May, I had a look at what’s possible already.

Read the whole story on Storify

Rolf 0 Comments

Hacking away on my Zim notebook

Working with open source is fun because it lets me explore software and change little things. If you’re not really into code and config files, you might want to skip this post 🙂

Zim task list (default)Zim task listSince some time I use Zim, a desktop wiki, to take notes in meetings and at conferences. It shares a few good things with Tomboy, the default notebook on Ubuntu (linking pages, immediately saving what you type so you don’t loose anything on sudden power loss) but has a few things I prefer:

  • Notes are stored as plain text: easier to use other text editors, version control, and scripts, and if for any reason Zim fails, I can still access my data quite easily.

  • The main interface makes organising and navigating notes easier.

  • The Task List plugin extracts lines with possible tasks, so it’s easier to keep track of follow-ups or actions in notes by simply typing a line like:

    [ ] Document my hacks in a blog post

The Task List itself is a separate window you can pull up, to see all open to do’s. But I wanted to fix a few things to make it more powerful in daily use.

Rolf 8 Comments
« Previous Page — Next Page »