Tony Hirst (blogger) explained

Tony Hirst is an academic in the Department of Computing and Communications at the Open University,[1] but better known for the OUseful Blog[2] on practical applications of open data.

Notable achievements

In February 2009, Hirst and colleague Joss Winn, established WriteToReply, to re-publish the UK Government's Digital Britain Interim Report in a way that allowed readers to comment on each paragraph. This was among a number of experiments to promote greater online public participation in government consultations.[3]

In March 2009, Hirst created a technique for extracting and presenting subtitles generated from Twitter status updates in SubRip (*.srt) format[4]

Hirst won the 2011 "Open Up" contest for his ideas about the use of UCAS data.[5] The Open Up contest was run by TSO (formerly "The Stationery Office", a publishing company that supplies the UK Government) and came with a £50,000 development fund to enable the idea.[6] Hirst was chosen by a judging panel headed up by TSO director of digital products Robin Brattel, and included artificial intelligence expert Sir Nigel Richard Shadbolt and Open University director of communications Lucian J Hudson.[7] [8]

Hirst was described as "brilliant" by The Guardian data blog for his work analysing the use of Twitter by journalists.[9] [10]

Media work

Hirst has been an academic adviser and expert contributor to the BBC World Service programme Click, formerly Digital Planet.[11] [12]

He was co-founder of the Open University Robotics Outreach Group, which led to the Blue Peter/RoboFesta Competition in 2001. This competition - which required children to "Design a Really Useful Robot" - had 32,000 entries.[13]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Biography at Arcadia Project. Arcadia Project. 2011-04-11.
  2. Web site: OUseful Blog. Tony Hirst. Tony Hirst (blogger). 2011-04-11.
  3. Web site: What's it all about?. WriteToReply Blog. WriteToReply (Tony Hirst and Joss Winn). Tony Hirst (blogger). 2009-02-05. 2011-04-15.
  4. Web site: Twitter Powered Subtitles for Conference Audio/Videos on Youtube. OUseful Blog. Tony Hirst. Tony Hirst (blogger). 2009-03-08. 2011-04-11.
  5. Web site: Blog Post From Tony Hirst, OpenUp Winner 2011. TSO OpenUp Blog. Tony Hirst. Tony Hirst (blogger). 2011-04-06. 2011-04-11.
  6. OpenUp – TSO Launches Open Data Challenge with £50,000 Development Fund. TSO. 2011-03-23. 2011-04-11.
  7. Web site: UK Digital Technology takes another step – Open Data | Lucian J. Hudson, Director of Communications, The Open University – personal blog . Open.ac.uk . 2011-03-26 . 2013-09-04.
  8. Web site: OpenUp Panel Chair Robin Brattel, shares the panel's 'judging thoughts' « TSO Open.Up Blog . Blog.openup.tso.co.uk . 2011-04-01 . 2013-09-04.
  9. Web site: UK journalists on Twitter: how they all follow each other. Guardian Data Blog. Simon Rogers. 2011-04-11. 2011-04-11. The brilliant Tony Hirst on his blog Ouseful has [...].
  10. Web site: UK Journalists on Twitter. OUseful Blog. Tony Hirst. Tony Hirst (blogger). 2011-04-10. 2011-04-11.
  11. Web site: BBC World Service Programmes - Click 01/02/2011. 2011-02-01. 2011-05-05. In the first of a series of programmes on openness, Tony Hirst of the Open University joins Gareth Mitchell to discuss these ideas, looking at open source, open data and open standards..
  12. Web site: Digital Planet investigates the history of the PC. 2009-05-15. 2011-05-05. Dr Tony Hirst from the Department of Communication and Systems at The Open University and academic advisor for the series [...].
  13. Web site: The Blue Peter – RoboFesta Robot Design Competition. 2001-03-23. 2011-05-05.

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