A bit of a Web 2.0 day

I spent a fair chunk of yesterday looking at and talking about various Web 2.0 applications, mash-ups and events.

It was all started by reading an article on the BBC website, Government launches data mash-up. This led me to look at FixMyStreet.com, an officially-sanctioned project from MySociety.org that allows UK residents to report vandalism, abandoned cars and other nuisances in their neighbourhoods. I then clicked through to MySociety.org’s website and learned about their forthcoming OpenTech event (it’s this Saturday, 5 July, in London – too late, I’m afraid, for me to rearrange my plans and get along, but I’m hoping to read up on it afterwards). Among the sessions, there will be talks about OpenStreetMap.com (maps that you can edit, similar to Wikipedia) and PlanningAlerts.com – both of which may be of interest to a built environment audience, I think.

These sites were fresh in my mind when I met up with Fairsnape Consulting‘s Martin Brown yesterday afternoon for a brainstorming session about Be2camp. He then introduced a whole host of other ideas, some of them (Walk Score, for example) mashups of Google Maps (the BIW office in Woking, where I work, gets a score of 82 out of 100, incidentally). After the meeting, I worked the whole conversation up into a mindmap using Bubbl.us (see post) which I then shared with some of the other Be2camp protagonists (still trying to sort out a sharing/editing glitch though) via emails plus a note on the Be2camp wiki. One of them (thanks, Jodie) sent me a note about a forthcoming event on ‘cloud computing’ – CloudCampLondon, on 16 July – which I’ve just registered to attend.

Update (04 July 2008): Just been forwarded a link to a new blog, Show Us a Better Way, tied in with the UK government’s mash-up competition mentioned above. The Power of Information Task Force’s blog is also interesting reading. And it all ties in with what the Guardian newspaper has long been campaigning about with its Free Our Data campaign (see blog; I also posted about this two years ago).