Exciting to (finally) see a freely available Web service for looking up Member of Parliament in Canada based on a postal code.

Historically, the various licensing costs and restrictions on the data required to support this service made it hard to provide as a "free as in free beer" service to organizations that wanted to make use of the data in advocacy applications and so on.

It seems those barriers have been lowered, as Cory Horner from the How'd They Vote team announces the service and speaks to the licensing questions:

I am pleased to present, at long last, a Postal Code to Member of Parliament web service:

http://howdtheyvote.ca/news.php?i=free-postal-code-lookup-service

Sadly the raw data cannot be shared, but fortunately the terms of the licence dictate that its use in a web service is permitted.

Russell McOrmond, a pioneer in this area, pressed Cory about lookups based on geolocation, i.e., enabling an end-user to click on a map and receive information on their Member of Parliament (made difficult by the nature of riding boundaries). And it appears that Cory has added that functionality to the API also, so that latitude and longitude can be used instead of postal code in the API query.

The geeky among you might want to also know that the service using PostGIS as the spatial database.

Exciting times in Canada, as geeks start to put the Web services in place to enable more democracy-enabling technology.

(Thanks to Civic Access for the info.)

I stumbled on the "lifestream" blog of Cory O'Brien today. Being a fan of "lifestreams" (an aggregation of 'actions' taken on various sites) myself, I was interested to find that Cory's site was running on an lifestream aggregation platform called Sweet Cron, which was new to me. Sweet Cron is an open-source PHP-based application developed by "yongfook."

The developer, however, has since moved his own lifestream/blog to the free service called Posterous. Posterous, like Tumblr makes blogging easy, which is great. However, Posterous, like Tumblr, also has a very opaque business plan. Call me cynical: but I can't get my head around relying on "free" hosted Web services for more than transient projects. (I'm even starting to question my own previous musings about a "Software pyramid for a healthy non-profit".)

From the recent purchase of EtherPad by Google -- leaving even their paid customers in the lurch -- to the quiet shut down of free service TwitApps, it seems that hosted services -- paid or not -- can be volatile ground these days. There's a long list of web services that have joined the "dead pool" over the last few years -- I know that I've been bitten more than once (Stikipad, Ma.gnolia, etc.)

If you've read Free by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, you'll know that most of these services aren't free by any means; they are simply going for the largest market possible to make it feasible for 5% of users to pay the freight for the other 95%. If they can't reach the mass market necessary to succeed, troubling times lay ahead for the service's users.

Enough of these free services have shut down that I've started moving toward installed software again for my own personal needs. After enough wasted time looking for half-baked free services, I've found it becomes worthwhile to invest in running the service myself on my own infrastructure. Your mileage may vary of course.

All that said, I'm sincerely curious about what others are doing: Are you relying more-and-more on free services like Posterous and Tumblr? Do you think about the day of reckoning when, inevitability, they introduce a premium plan, sell your data, or show ads on your site? Do you back up your data regularly, or just have faith that all will be okay? Or, alternately, are you starting to dust off your old programming books and getting to work on your own solutions?

That’s right. I’m hitting the road again to bring the “Web love” to magazine folks in Vancouver. This is the second-last stop on a cross-country tour that started in Toronto, got snowed-in in Halifax, and will conclude its first circuit in Edmonton at the end of March. So far, it’s been a hell of a lot of fun — the faculty is top-notch and the participants are reporting back that they’ve embarked on new Web initiatives already. What more could one ask?

So here are the details for Vancouver:

Do me a quick favour. Take a moment and think of the exact opposite of a traditional Web portal — conjure up something like AOL or, in the non-profit space, something like TechSoup — and then think of the opposite and tell me what comes to mind? If you come up with something concrete, pop your thoughts in the comments below.

In case you missed the note in my last newsletter (hint, hint — you should sign-up!), Magazines Canada and Centennial College are putting together a “Web Weekend” on Saturday, November 24 and Sunday, November 25 at Centennial College in downtown Toronto.

It has been a hectic couple weeks since we returned from out west; catch-up sure can be a killer. Either way, I’m not letting my overly-tired ass stay put tonight, tomorrow, or Friday, as Toronto becomes ground zero for some of the most exciting conversation in online news, citizen journalism, and media democracy.

Thanks to Lisa Rundle, I’ve got ring-side seats for what is sure to be one of the week’s more exciting events: CBC’s The Future of the Future of News forum. Sparks are sure to fly when Andrew Keen and Leonard Brody go head-to-head on the topic of citizen journalism. Andrew is the author of The Cult of the Amateur — a book that refuses to accept that the Web is changing the rules — and Leonard is the founder of Now Public, a Vancouver-based citizen journalism start-up that is catching mainstream attention.

Over the last couple of weeks, I was thinking a lot about “network leadership,” and the role of innovative technology, and how it all becomes part of a movement here in Canada that could change the field of innovation. The last burning question for me is: How can Canadian grant makers play a bigger role in catalyzing the necessary networks, and helping innovators build the necessary relationships?

Lots has already been said about the opportunities for a more holistic approach to financing non-profit technology initiatives. So, when it comes time to explore new ways of financing social innovation, I hope that foundations and grant makers will invest some time to integrate the “old” ideas too. But, when I return to the question “how can Canadian grant makers play a bigger role in ensuring that technology projects are successful and sustainable,” I always come back to the same conclusion: the funding model needs to be innovative too.

A couple of months ago I got to share my feelings about “digital editions” with a room full of unsuspecting publishers at the (first ever) MagNet conference in Toronto. The title of the session was Digital Editions: New Medium for an Old Magazine? and, in preparation for the session, I really had to do some research. The thing is that the session title and description got handed to us presenters (a complaint I heard across the board from other presenters) and we had to do our best. In my case, doing the research helped me to build a more complete argument for why I feel digital editions — in the traditional meaning of the term — just aren’t a good investment for publishers. Here’s why…

One of the questions that I’ve struggled with over the last couple of years is: What systemic changes are necessary to help catalyze innovation around social technology? I came back to this question the other week as the conversation swayed toward the opportunity for progressive organizations — and social innovators — to integrate social software, social networks, and the ideas of Web 2.0 into their work. I think for most of us who work in the non-profit technology space, the sparkle is off the Web 2.0 starburst, as we see organizations struggle to fully “get” what this new technology movement is all about.

What I do think is cool about Web 2.0 — especially when it comes to non-profit organizations and social innovators — is the operational style (business model if you must). Having a usable, interactive, data-exposing, read/write Web site is, in my opinion, more a function of a new approach to problem solving than a tectonic shift in the way the underlying technology works.

I have to admit that when I first heard of Internet-based virtual worlds like Second Life some years ago, I didn’t rush out to sign-up and create an Avatar. Given that I’ve never even found the time to play a video game on a computer that I’ve had for three years, it certainly wasn’t high on my list. And, when Web of Change alumni Darren Barefoot created the satirical site Get a First Life, I was laughing pretty hard.

However, the last few months has started to make me re-think my position. Not entirely, but a bit.