A new article out of the company reports that “EasyAsk, the natural language technology and solutions leader, [has] announced the opening of EasyAsk’s first European office at Thames Valley Park, Reading, UK. In 2012, EasyAsk grew revenues by 40% and increased its customer base by 22% with new names including The North Face, Anna’s Linens and Cigars International. In addition, EasyAsk teamed up with Global leader SAP. Gartner listed EasyAsk as Cool Vendor for BI and Analytics and cited the company as ‘one of the premier ecommerce search and merchandizing software providers’ in its research: Best Practices in Strategically Combining Search, Content Analytics and E-Commerce.” Read more

Trevor Jackson, deputy editor of the BMJ (British Medical Journal), an international peer reviewed medical journal, recently discussed a number of open data initiatives currently underway in the United Kingdom. He begins, “One of the most popular videos on TED.com is a mini-lecture by the writer, doctor, and academic Ben Goldacre, called ‘What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe’ (http://tinyurl.com/9y8chac).” Read more

The Open Data Institute has Multiple Openings in Shoreditch, UK. According to the institute, “The UK is the first country in the world to create a body solely dedicated to the business of utilising Open Data. The world’s first Open Data Institute (ODI) is being established and will incubate, nurture and mentor new businesses exploiting Open Data for economic growth. Read more

The Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom has published an Open Data command paper. According to the office, the paper “sets out how we’re putting data and transparency at the heart of government and public services. We’re making it easier to access public data; easier for data publishers to release data in standardised, open formats; and engraining a ‘presumption to publish’ unless specific reasons (such as privacy or national security) can be clearly articulated. From the Prime Minister down, central Government is committed to making Open Data an effective engine of economic growth, social wellbeing, political accountability and public service improvement.” Download the full paper here. Read more

Sir Tim Berners-Lee recently spoke out against UK government plans to monitor citizen’s internet use, Ian Katz reports. Katz writes, “The government’s controversial plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor the internet use and digital communications of every person in the UK suffered a fresh blow on Tuesday when the inventor of the world wide web warned that the measures were dangerous and should be dropped. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who serves as an adviser to the government on how to make public data more accessible, says the extension of the state’s surveillance powers would be a ‘destruction of human rights’ and would make a huge amount of highly intimate information vulnerable to theft or release by corrupt officials.” Read more

Jeni Tennison recently discussed the United Kingdom’s current open standards consultation, calling UK citizens to action. She writes, “Over the last few months, the UK Government has been running a consultation on its Open Standards policy. The outcome of this consultation is incredibly important not only for organisations and individuals who want to work with government but also because of its potential knock-on effects on the publication of Open Data and the use of Open Source software within public sector organisations. Read more

A new article reports that the Cabinet Office “has chosen a proprietary software system to implement the keystone of its policy to create a level playing field for open source. Under pressure to fulfill the government’s election promise to eradicate systemic bias against open source software, the Cabinet Office rushed through a procurement for an asset register last month. But it raised hackles among open source suppliers it invited to bid. They discovered the same problems that inspired Cabinet Office open source policy hindered their bidding for its own work.” Read more

A new London-based semantic start-up by the name of State is looking for a Big Data and Machine Learning Engineer. According to the post, “We’re building an ambitious big new site in the social web area, with plenty of technology challenges at the core. We need a software engineer who can work on the machine learning, data mining and recommendation aspects particularly. You’ll need a healthy mix of academic smarts and pragmatic software engineering experience. You’d be joining a young team at the early stages of growth, so there is a massive opportunity to influence the product direction and break new ground.” Read more

Talis is looking for a Senior Technical Lead for their education department in Birmingham, UK, “who will not only provide hands on leadership to the development team, but make a significant contribution to the development and evolution of the business as a whole. This role will have full technical responsibility for the entire division – including the offshore team in India – and would suit an already experienced technical lead looking to step up to a more strategic role over the medium term.” Read more

The Guardian.co.uk Data Blog has released an array of data regarding the riots in London and around London in the hopes that socially aware developers will use the data to create helpful visualizations, mashups, apps, and the like. The article states, “The riots that started in London have spread across England, to Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool and Nottingham. [Tuesday] night incidents were reported from a variety of places such West Bromwich, Birkenhead, Salford and Gloucester. Fewer incidents were noted in the capital city as police deployed 16,000 officers onto the streets and many shops and offices closed early. It was a different story in the West Midlands which has now arrested 300 people since the beginning of the riots. The country has seemingly changed overnight. [Tuesday] it was announced that Parliament would be recalled and discussions about policing strategy continue. But what exactly has happened where?” Read more