Comments on: if I can pester you about just one obscure topic we talk about at work…

By: mike d

mike d — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:49:39 +0000

I’m running Moz 3.6.23 on my work computer (XP); not sure why it’s not working. Oddly not working in IE, either. There it gives me an error in the status bar saying “Line: 90 Char: 5 Error: ‘Processing’ is undefined” Hope that helps.

Here’s as good a spot as any to read about Harrowell’s stuff:
http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2011/06/meet-project-lobster.html

Pretty much he’s scraping feeds to do some basic link analysis stuff. He used to do it with plane tail number registries to figure out Victor Bout’s airline empire; now he’s using FOIA-equivalent schedule disclosures to find out who’s meeting with whom in the UK Govt. Interesting hobby.

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By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:11:23 +0000

Hmm. The site *should* be working. It’s not Flash — what browser are you using? Some company records won’t display big, messy graphs. You should try using the autocomplete feature (“general dynamics” should work well). And then just be patient.

This site is designed primarily to demonstrate the problem, not to propose a specific solution. There are various approaches to the issue that could be part of an eventual solution — Chris Taggart’s OpenCorporates, the Dodd-Frank LEI rulemaking, Beth Noveck’s ORGpedia initiative — but I think it’s too early to say which ones will be most successful.

Personally, I feel that the current regime of business intelligence firms trying to keep up with the private sector will never produce satisfactory results. One way or another we need to expand the reporting burden, and to do so with a strong emphasis on modern open data norms. I suspect that the role Sunlight will play is to inject those norms into the process as a leviathan like ISO establishes a new, government-sanctioned identifier regime.

I’m not familiar with Harrowell’s work specifically — our work has only recently begun to hook into the international sphere. Is there a particularly good place for me to start reading about it?

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By: mike d

mike d — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:02:37 +0000

Microsite doesn’t seem to be working (ie I type in a company name and the dynamic graph doesn’t do anything, although Flash is wonky on this machine, if that’s what’s driving it), so I can talk about the merits of what you guys are suggesting. Although I can’t tell if you’re just publicizing the problem or proposing a solution. I’d be interested in hearing more of the latter.

And I assume you’re familiar with Alex (Yorkshire Ranter) Harrowell’s work on corporate influence networks in the UK?

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