[okfn-labs] Labs newsletter: 12 December, 2013

Thu Dec 12 15:32:17 UTC 2013

We're back after taking a break last week with a bumper crop of updates. A
few things have changed: Labs activities are now coordinated entirely
through GitHub. Meanwhile, there's been some updates around the
Nomenklatura<http://nomenklatura.okfnlabs.org>,
Annotator <http://okfnlabs.org/annotator/>, and Data
Protocols<http://www.dataprotocols.org>projects and some new posts on
the Labs
blog <http://okfnlabs.org/blog/>.

*## Migration from Trello to GitHub*

For some time now, Labs activities requiring coordination have been
organized on Trello <http://trello.com>—but those days are now over. Labs
has moved its organizational setup over to GitHub <http://github.com>,
coordinating actions and making plans by means of GitHub issues. This
change comes as a big relief to the many Labs members who already use
GitHub as their main platform for collaboration.

General Labs-related activities are now tracked on the Labs site's
issues<https://github.com/okfn/okfn.github.com/issues/>,
and activities around individual projects are managed (as before!) through
those projects' own issues.

*## New Bad Data*

New examples of bad data <http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/> continue to roll
in—and we invite even more new submissions<http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/add/>
.

Bad datasets added since last newsletter include the UK's Greater London
Authority spend data <http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/ex/gla-spending/> (65+
files with 25+ different structures!), Nature Magazine's supplementary
data<http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/ex/nature-magazine-supplementary/>(an
awful PDF jumble), and more.

*## Nomenklatura: new alpha*

As previously noted, Labs member Friedrich Lindenberg
<http://pudo.org/>has been thinking about "a fairly radical
re-framing" of the
Nomenklatura <http://nomenklatura.okfnlabs.org/> data reconciliation
service.

Friedrich has now released an alpha version of a new Nomenklatura at
nk-dev.pudo.org. The major changes with this alpha include:

   - A fully JavaScript-driven frontend
   - String matching now happens inside the PostgreSQL database
   - Better introductory text explaining what Nomenklatura does
   - "entity" and "alias" domain objects have been merged into "entity"

Friedrich is keen to hear what people think about this prototype—so give it
a try and leave your comments at the Nomenklatura
repo<https://github.com/pudo/nomenklatura>
.

*## Annotator v1.2.9*

A new maintenance release of Annotator
<http://okfnlabs.org/annotator/>came out ten days ago. This new
version is intended to be one of the last
in the v1.2.x series—indeed, v1.2.8 itself was intended to be the last, but
that version had some significant issues that this new release corrects.

Fixes in this version include:

   - Fixed a major packaging error in v1.2.8: Annotator no longer exports
   an excessive number of tokens to the page namespace
   - Notification display bugfixes: notification levels are now correctly
   removed after notifications are hidden

The new Annotator is available, as always, from
GitHub<https://github.com/okfn/annotator/releases/tag/v1.2.9>
.

*## Data Protocols updates*

Data Protocols <http://dataprotocols.org/> is a project to develop simple
protocols and formats for working with open data. Rufus
Pollock<http://okfnlabs.org/members/rgrp/>wrote a cross-post
to the list<https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2013-December/001185.html>about
several new developments with Data Protocols, including:

   - Spec for adding "primary keys" to the JSON Table
Schema<http://dataprotocols.org/json-table-schema/> nearing
   consensus (discussion<https://github.com/dataprotocols/dataprotocols/issues/21>
   )
   - Spec for "foreign keys" also close to consensus
(discussion<https://github.com/dataprotocols/dataprotocols/issues/23>
   )
   - Proposal for a JSON spec for views of data, e.g. graphs or maps (
   discussion <https://github.com/dataprotocols/dataprotocols/issues/77>)

To read more, check out Rufus's
message<https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2013-December/001185.html>and
the Data
Protocols issues <https://github.com/dataprotocols/dataprotocols/issues>.

*## On the blog*

Labs members have added a couple new posts to the blog since the last
newsletter. Yours truly (with extensive help from Rufus) posted on using
Data Pipes to view a
CSV<http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2013/12/05/view-csv-with-data-pipes.html>.
Michael Bauer <http://okfnlabs.org/members/mihi>, meanwhile, wrote about
the new Reconcile-CSV
service<http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2013/12/06/Introducing-Reconcile-csv.html>he
developed while working on education data in Tanzania. Look to the
Labs
blog <http://okfnlabs.org/blog/> for the full scoop.

*## Get involved*

If you have some spare time this holiday season, why not spend it helping
out with Labs? We're always always looking for new people to join the
community <http://okfnlabs.org/join/>. Visit the Labs
issues<https://github.com/okfn/okfn.github.com/issues/>and the Ideas
Page <http://okfnlabs.org/ideas/> to get some ideas for how you can join in.

-- 
Neil Ashton

Technical Writer and Analyst  | skype: nmashton

The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>
*Empowering through Open Knowledge*
http://okfn.org/ | @okfn <http://twitter.com/okfn> | OKF on
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School of Data | http://schoolofdata.org |
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