While You Were Sleeping

A look back at some of the "disruptive technologies" which emerged in the last couple of years and how they are changing the way we live and operate.

Phase2 Talks to Paul Miller about Drupal, semantic technologies and opportunities in Government

In his latest podcast, Semantic expert and writer Paul Miller talks with Jeff Walpole, Frank Febbraro and Irakli Nadareishvili. They discuss our work with Drupal, semantic technologies and the recent trend to make Government data more usefully available via open source and semantic tools.

The Linked Data.gov Experiment

As we usher in this new era of open data and government transparency by making raw data available to the public in platform independent formats on Data.gov, we could be overlooking one of the simplest and most sincere opportunities to show what the open data movement is about: Linked Data. Linked data is the key to connecting government data sets to other government data and external data sources on the web.

I am hoping to create interest for a community-led project to prototype an RDF enabled dataset for Data.gov and link it to other related data sources in the Linked Data Cloud.

DC Area Online News Association Meetup Talked Government 2.0

On Tuesday night, a group of the DC areas leading online news practitioners gathered in a bar (go figure) to learn about the best sites and solutions for covering and digging into the new trend of government transparency. There were great presentations from Washington Post.com's Amanda Zamora and Phase2's Jeff Walpole.

Highlights from the NTEN 09 Conference in San Francisco

Last week I traveled to San Francisco for the NTEN NTC09 conference. I met some great people, learned a lot about what non-profits are doing and thinking about web technology these days, and chatted it up with fellow open source champions in the Drupal, Plone and Joomla communities. I concluded my visit with a presentation to the San Fransico Semantic Web Group and the Drupal Users Group on our work with Open Calais and the development of the OpenPublish tool.

World Bank Open API 2.0 Launched

World Bank has been collecting massive amounts of data, for the past 50+ years, and now possesses one of the richest repository of information about economic development in the world. Phase2 Technology had the pleasure of helping World Bank architect and engineer a new major release of its Open API 2.0

As we steadily approach the next era online where open data and the semantic web gives us more than we ever dreamed, the launch of each new major web-services API is significant. When a rich and unique data repository like the World Bank's opens its data for free, a world of possibilities opens up.

Dealing with social media overload

As more and more of the general public recognizes the power of the web as a platform for communication, collaboration and coordination, a crush of services and applications have emerged (Twitter, Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us, etc). No one has the time to keep up with dozens of these at once, so nailing effective integration and aggregation of these services will be the next big thing in the social media world.

Mashups and Free-Flowing Data in the Web 2.0 World

The idea of a "Mashup" is just one of those ubiquitous terms that invariably gets tossed around all the time when talking about the Web 2.0 movement. But what exactly defines a Mashup? And is it all fluff or can it provide not meaningful value in my site?

DASH Bus, meet Google Maps

Phase2’s Mass Transit Evangelist returns. Dash Bus schedules have arrived on Google Maps and it’s easier than ever to plan your route.

Business Analytics in Drupal with Views

Designing professional reports in Drupal is not trivial. At the same time, Durpal has one of the most advanced query builder tools (Views) that any CMS (open-source or not) has ever dreamed of. There’s clearly a gap.