Open Data

It may seem pointless. Who was actually waiting for a map that shows all the ideal hammock locations in Ghent? And yet it exists: an app that does exactly that.

Before you start thinking about your French lessons again: don’t worry, this article is not about the French language. It is about semantics and how computers handle it. “Fanfreluche est une poupée” or “Schanulleke is een pop” in Dutch is a sentence often used to learn French. Schanulleke is Wiske’s doll, a character from the comic books of Suske & Wiske. So, it’s a simple concept: Wiske has a doll, and that doll is called Schanulleke. Up to this point, the human reader is following along. I can guarantee you, for a computer this is a bigger challenge. ...

Combine the love for cycling with the passion for open data, and you get a new application: Tinder for Cyclists. It’s an application that allows cyclists to vote on bike lanes: swipe left for bad bike lanes, swipe right for the good ones. As a citizen of Ghent, you can’t ignore it: the love for cycling is generally accepted! From the cycling madness in (’t Kuipke)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuipke] to the overcrowded bike parks at the train stations, the bicycle has found a place within our daily lives. The cycling culture can even be divided into different scenes: amateur cyclists skimming the towpaths on weekends, the young family with the cargo bike and the long-tail bike on their way to school, the commuting speed pedelecers … There are several subcultures within Ghent’s cycling culture. Cycling is alive, especially in Ghent. ...