I am mostly a WordPress specialist and a Ruby on Rails developer.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve created a couple of apps based on Open Data from Trafford Council. Trafford and Salford Councils are the only 2 Councils in Greater Manchester to have any Open Data and Salford doesn’t have that much.

Trafford however released the locations of all sorts of things, from Libraries to Trees, Allotments to Recycling Centres, and I’ve mapped them!

Trafford Open Data Maps

Here’s the geeky/techy explanation about how I made this app:

The data Trafford Council provides is in XML format but I needed to get it into a databse so I could quickly query the data. This was particularly important for the Trees because there are 15,000 of them and the XML file was over 4MB which would have taken a long time to load and read and plot on a map. Having the tree data in a database makes it much quicker to access the tree data.

Since I’m a Ruby On Rails developer, I chose to create a simple Rails application to import the data from the XML files into a MySQL database, and then to query the database to plot the location of the items on a Google Map. This was pretty straight forward for most of the data sets, but the Bus Stops and Trees were a different ball game.

There are nearly 1,600 Bus Stops and over 15,000 Trees, so to plot them all on a map of Trafford would take a while and clutter the map with the marker icons to the point of it not being useful. So I created some nifty code so that only 300 trees are on the map at any time. This helps the visualisation of the markers on the map by plotting just enough trees to make the map still understandable. Then when you zoom into the map more trees are loaded so that when you are zoomed in far enough, all the trees in the area you are looking at are plotted. This is the same process with the Bus Stops.

I also used the URN numbers of the Schools to create links to their OFSTED page and their EDUBASE page so that the Schools map is more useful.

The Parks And Open Spaces, Recycling Centres, Schools and Trees pages also have Info boxes below the maps displaying some stats for those data sets. The place names and tree names link to Wikipedia articles to provide more context and images.

To get the app off my computer and onto the web for all to see, I deployed it to Heroku which offers free hosting for Ruby On Rails applications. It was the first time I used Heroku and I found it really easy and quick and free Rails hosting is hard to argue with! Their limit for free hosting is that your database can’t be over 5MB, and this is the reason I haven’t included the 27,000 Streetlights!

If you have any ideas for new features or ways to interact with these maps, or want to contribute your time and skills, please let me know by leaving a comment below or emailing me at ben@bobop.co.uk.

Last week the Manchester Young Rewired State team were in MadLab hacking together some fun, interesting and brilliant sites.

I spent half an hour with them on Tuesday hearing about the ideas they had and what they had coded so far. I was really impressed by their creativity, enthusiasm and intelligence and some of their ideas ended up winning awards at the presentation ceremony in London on the Friday.

My favourite 2 apps are the mobile optimised Bus Timetable web app and the Live Bus Map showing where buses are across Greater Manchester (if they are on time!).

GMPTE Bus Timetables

GMPTE Live Bus Map

Both of these apps use the GMPTE Bus timetable, route and service data which was is the first release of this kind of data in the UK. Paul and Julian from the Open Data Manchester group negotiated the release of this data and announced it less than 2 weeks ago. When I heard about this data being made open, a live map of buses was the first thing I imagined it could be used for, like the live London underground map I saw a couple of months ago. So to see it built within 2 weeks of the data being released is really exciting!

I have a few thoughts on how this data might be useful in other ways, but more on that another time.

Last night’s Social Media Surgery was another great opportunity for people to find out more about social media and how it can help them or their organisation attract attention or spread their news. I was one of the surgeons again along side Adrian Slatcher, Karl Brookes, Mark Hanson, Jennifer O-Grady and the organiser Chi-chi.

Topics included the optimal frequency of Tweeting, the Times’ paywall, the future of Ning and how best to Blog for Business. Like last month, I really enjoyed the opportunity to share some thoughts and offer advice to the attendees about their social media related issues.

I’m chuffed to have been offered a permanent place as a surgeon at Manchesters Social Media Surgery. Chi-chi offered me the role due to my social media consultancy work in the third-sector and I’m excited about the idea of being able to help many other people and organisations during these surgeries over the coming months.

To find out when and where the next Social Media Surgery is, see this website or follow Chi-chi on Twitter.

Hooray! WordPress 3.0 has been released.

This latest version has all kinds of useful additional features which I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into. But best of all, a number of things are easier to do, such as creating navigation menu’s and updating plugins, themes and the WordPress code. See this video for more:

I’ve been waiting for 3.0 for a while so that I can use the custom post types feature to create a portfolio area on this site. So stay tuned!

Although “Social Media Surgery” suggests some kind of life-saving operation performed on some social media site, it’s actually a place to come and get help or find out more about social media and how it can benefit you or your organisation:

Social Media Surgery events are informal, free-to-attend, evening business networking events based around a panel made up of social media practitioners and agencies discussing&dissecting social media project issues presented by the attending crowd.

I will be one of the “surgeons” at this months session, held at the MDDA (Lower Ground Floor, 117-119 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6ED) tomorrow evening (8th June) from 5:30pm. This months theme is “LinkedIn vs Facebook for Business: Pros and Cons” though you can come and raise any social media related issues. See the Ning site for more details.

It will be the first time I will have been to a Social Media Surgery so I don’t really know what format to expect but I hope to be able to help some people out!

I managed to get the the end of the first Open Data Manchester meeting on tuesday evening organised by Paul Robinson through his work with Future Everything. I’m excited about this group and what may emerge from it, especially after meeting some of the other folk who are interested too.

What pleased me most was that there were people at the meeting who represent each stage on the journey open data will take to become useful to the public. Specifically I met a journalist and a digital producer. I thought it would only be developers at the meeting but with the developers building tools to use the open data, digital producers helping to translate that into accessible forms and journalists feeding the results to the public, it seems that the right mix of people and skills are involved with this new Open Data Manchester group. Which is really exciting!

Once the first set(s) of data become available, I can’t wait to see how, and how quickly, the tools and visualisations emerge.

I was greatly inspired and encouraged by Tim Berners-Lee’s brief talk at TED earlier this year. Take a look:

I spoke at last night’s Manchester Net Tuesday event and prepared this presentation beforehand, take a peek if you’re interested:

I had some great feedback with some good ideas of other advice I could offer including using forms to collect user feedback, contact management, data backups and data protection. If you’re interested in having a consultancy session and you’re in the third-sector, email me at ben@bobop.co.uk

I’ll be speaking at Net Tuesday this month about the Web & Social Media Consultancy which I have recently secured funding to provide.

The Consultancy is available for free only to organisations or people in the third sector – charities, community groups, individual campaigners, etc.

I’ll be sharing the plan to provide consultancy and help to 48 organisations or people over the coming year – an ambitious goal! I hope to be able to help them understand and use technology and online services more effectively and efficiently. I also hope to recieve some advice and recommendations on how to implement this Consultancy and what else I could advise or offer to these third sector groups and individuals.

So if you want to find out more, come along to Net Tuesday on the 27th April at 6:30pm at MadLab, 36-40 Edge Street, Manchester, M4 1HN.

If you’re in the third sector and are based in Greater Manchester and would like some free Web & Social Media Consultancy, just email me at ben@bobop.co.uk and I’d be glad to help!

Ordnance Survey, the company behind the great maps you find in tourist information centres or village newsagents, have opened up their map data to the public under the name OpenData.

This is a big deal for the Open Data movement in the UK, many supporters have been pushing for this for many years. I have been interested in Open Data for a while now because it is right that we citizens have access to the data our government, and others, collect about us and the areas we live in. I joined the brand new Open Data Manchester group in the hope that I might be able to help develop some really useful applications using the data which the Greater Manchester Authorities might open up over the coming months.

Will this new service from Ordnance Survey replace Google Maps on UK based websites? I think it will be dependant on the API – how much developers can do with these maps. One thing in it’s favour is that many non-techie web users might feel more comfortable with the style of these maps from the Great Britain Road Maps in their cars, or the OS maps they’ve bought when going for walks.

But for now, here is a map, using the OpenSpace API, of the route I cycle from Oxford Road to FlyThe.Coop each morning!

I am a founding member and secretary of FlyThe.Coop, a co-working and collaboration co-operative in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Check the website out to find out more: www.flythe.coop

Currently we have 2 permanent desks available for £200 per month. If you’re interested you’ll have to snap them up fast because they are on a first-come, first-served basis! Email me if you want to know more: ben@bobop.co.uk