The Guardian recently opened up its data for public ‘consumption’ i.e. mashing and visualising. With its own campaign free our data and the government’s urging of local councils to make data public, the initiative marks something of a flagship for open data protection, use and re-use. Open is safer.

An example of the kinds of things that are being done and how they can be quickly useful is this application by Stephen Elliot which visualises featured articles in the guardian by keyword. Here’s a visualisation showing the trend in features on facebook and twitter. Click the image to enlarge.

This certainly has use for students starting out on projects as well as classroom use for various courses.