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A web app for tiny tasks and a crowd of volunteers
URL: tasket.dharmafly.com
People like to help out with a good cause, but it can be difficult to find the time. What if, through the Web, we could gather enough people and bring them together to achieve something great?
At Dharmafly, we’ve been hard at work creating an open source tool called “Tasket“, which we hope will do just that. It’s a visually immersive web app, riffing off some of our data visualisation work, that engages volunteers in performing tiny tasks for a cause.
Essentially, it’s a “micro-volunteering” task management tool that lets people create tasks that need doing. Anyone can claim those tasks and Tasket helps everyone track the progress of the community. Continue reading
JS1K: Phi
Demo: js1k.com/demo/695
Code: github.com/premasagar/js1k
Way back, in the dark, distant past – long before the days of the interwebs and cellular telephones – programmers were limited to a mere 1 kilobyte of computer memory for their programmes. Every single character in a computer programme, every dot and semicolon mattered.
What if we only had 1KB at our disposal today? This year, a 1KB JavaScript competition was launched to find out.
My entry for JS1K is called “Phi”. It’s a generative sequence of colours and decay, using HTML5 canvas. It uses the Golden Ratio to determine the colour, position and intensity of its painted shapes and lines. Click and hold the mouse for a burst of colour. Refresh the demo page for a random tone.
What makes a UK Online centre?
URL: rewiredstate.org/projects/what-makes-a-centre
We previously blogged about helping to create a prototype SMS text message service for the Government’s UK Online Centres. The centres help people get online for the first time, and are a key part of the government’s strategy for Digital Engagement.
We also worked on a handful of data visualisations to highlight the hidden aspects of the centres. Continue reading
Digital inclusion goes mobile
URL: rewiredstate.org/projects/sms-centre-finder
There are 61 million people in the UK and 10 million of them have never used the Web.
How would you help someone to get online for the first time?
The job of the Government’s UK Online Centres is to help bridge the digital divide, by providing places with free public Internet and hands-on assistance. We recently helped them to explore a new web strategy, as part of a prototyping session at Google London, which was Continue reading
Show me the money
URL: guardian.co.uk/datablog/…infovis (fullscreen version)
There’s been a lot of discussion recently about public spending, amidst a global recession, countries in crisis and the emergency budget.
The Guardian has been following this closely and, when the UK Treasury released “Coins“, its huge database of Government spending, the Guardian invited a small group of programmers and experts to work with them and help unravel the hidden stories buried beneath the data.
Brought in by Rewired State, I worked with others from the Open Knowledge Foundation and MySociety on data visualisations and articles for the Guardian Data Blog. Continue reading
Science Hack Day and The Revolutionaries
URL: dharmafly.com/revolutionaries/
Last week saw an exciting event that brought together scientists, programmers and designers: “Science Hack Day“.
Held at The Guardian in London, this was an up-all-night two days of web development, hardware building and invention, with the goal of prototyping new services and tools for science and scientists. Continue reading
Festive Geekery
It’s geek festival season, down here in Brighton. First up is dConstruct, a one-day conference on the cutting edge of interface design and user engagement.
And then it’s good old BarCamp Brighton, now into its fourth incarnation. BarCamp, always a favourite, is a handmade 2-day conference, pulled together by its community of participants. Everyone gives a talk on something they feel (geekily) passionate about, and they bring sleeping bags to spend the night at the donated event space. This time, we’ll be moving into the old Music Library for the weekend.
Dharmafly is again a proud sponsor of BarCamp. I had in mind a fun little game to give away to the attendees, but not quite had the time to pull it off. Next time, next time. (And no more crunchy spirulina, like last time). See our BarCamp archive for more.
If you’re at either of these events, do roll up and say hi.
Update: At BarCamp, I gave a talk called “Indestructible JavaScript Widgets“, about the pitfalls and solutions when developing widgets to embed in third-party websites (like our widget for BBC World Service). No pretty slides, but my notes are at: dharmafly.com/bcb4.
Teen Hackers Take Over Google
At the weekend, I helped mentor a group of tech-minded teenagers at the community-led event, “Young Rewired State“. Held at Google’s London HQ, this was a two-day, action-packed programme for 15-18 year olds to build something better with government data on the web. And the results were truly impressive.
Young people are sometimes written-off as being apathetic, or handed patronising websites and services to interact with. Here was their chance to show the kinds of services they really want and to demonstrate that, given access to the right kinds of data and a little support along the way, they are more than capable of building it themselves. Continue reading
BBC World Service Widget Launched
We recently completed an exciting project for BBC World Service: the World Service Widget, which lets people share BBC World Service content on their websites, blogs or computer desktops.
It’s being released on a number of web platforms (WordPress, iGoogle, Adobe Air, Facebook, Netvibes, Mac Dashboard, Vista Sidebar and as a simple snippet of HTML code). These are being rolled out over the coming days.
The widget is available in a multitude of different languages and content networks. (This was one of the trickiest aspects of development – although there were other, perhaps even stickier issues). Below, for example, are the English and Farsi flavours. (Farsi is the language spoken in Iran. It is written right-to-left, and it has a special widget: click on a news story to open the “Lightbox” window). Continue reading
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