Timetric

Timetric is a Cambridge based startup that, in their own words, is

here to help you make sense of data. If you think about it, most of the numbers we come across every day are things like temperatures, prices, rates, volumes: numbers which vary over time. That’s what Timetric focusses on: graphing, tracking and comparing the movements of data over time.

The fancy name for this sort of thing is time series analysis. We’re building tools to make it as easy to build models on top of time series — updated whenever the data they’re based on is updated — as it is to use a spreadsheet.

Which sounds pretty cool. I have to say, what I know about statistics and time series can easily be written on a stamp with a carrot, but even I can see some of the benefits of this, especially as Timetric makes it easy to embed graphs into blogs and websites. Like this, which I chose at random from the Timetric site:

With all the recent work in and around government to open data up and make it reusable, we are going to need the tools that will help us make sense of it all. It look like Timetric is going to be one of those tools.

Got an iPhone? Get AudioBoo

Neville writes about the latest service from Best Before – the guys behind the awesome turn-your-macbook-into-a-videobooth service Videoboo – which is Audioboo.

What you do with Audioboo is simple: record audio on your iPhone and publish the recordings to your Audioboo account on the web, complete with your geo-location data if you choose to include that via an option on the iPhone when you first use the app.

Your account has an RSS feed so anyone can subscribe to that feed and get all your boos.

I’ve been playing with Audioboo for the past few days and, frankly, I’m addicted. I do have an affinity for recording audio, I admit, far more than with video, so if I find something appealing in this area, I’m probably predisposed towards wanting to like it.

Here’s a video showing just how easy it is to record quick podcasts and get them online with Audioboo:

Hello AudioBoo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.

I’m hoping to be using this service a lot – especially when social reporting at events. Will people be more willing to talk into a phone than a video camera? Let’s find out!

OpenGov

Mitch Sava of PolyWonk emailed me the other day with details of a really interesting event he is putting together with Simon Grice of Ideas.org, called OpenGov.

Taking place in London on 22nd April 2009, OpenGov will be

a practical one-day conference to discuss the challenges and opportunities of social technologies to enable engagement, collaboration, and transparency in government.

It will feature discussions around:

  • collaboration throughout the policy lifecycle
  • constituent engagement and participation
  • mobilisation and delivery

Sounds good. If you’d like to get a ticket, you can do so with a discount: