Gareth Shapiro London Based Flex/AS3 Freelance Web Developer

You did read correctly. That does say "Hack" and "The Government" in one sentence.

People often misuse the word hack. It originally meant "to solve problem" and a group of developers, designers and statisticians got together in London over the weekend to solve the "What cool things can you build with publicly accessible government data?" question.

Being a Flash and Flex programmer naturally I thought it might be good idea to do an interactive data visualisation of some sort.

Isn't it great when digital work lasts longer than 5 min? I recently updated a piece I did exactly a year ago for The Economist's annual World In project.

I have been using Google's excellent free Webmaster Tools to make sure that this blog is in good shape as far as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is concerned. One of the things I needed to improve were the description meta tags on each page but I could not find a plug in that would help me achieve this. So I wrote one myself and it is free for anyone who uses the Nucleus blogging system to use.

The World in 2009 is the 23rd edition of The Economist's annual collection of predictions for the year ahead—with views from journalists, politicians and business people.

This year's edition has two interactive online pieces looking at Countries and Industries in 2009. I was responsible for all the Actionscript and PHP coding.

Polonetworks is a global membership organisation and central agency to the polo industry.

In 2008 they launched a social networking website to enhance the services offered to their worldwide membership base.

The British Heart Foundation ran an anti smoking campaign on UK television that was based on depicting, in graphic detail, what can happen to the arteries of smokers, by showing cigarettes dripping with fat. It was tough viewing but the advert drove record numbers of visitors to the charity's website. In order to continue this message, creative web content was created to engage visitors and provide the final piece of a campaign that begun with posters on the street.

Producing television advertising is a global business. An advertising production company may have their office in London while needing to show a new script to a director who is on location in Hong Kong. It is exactly because of this type of situation that Stink decided to make their current in-house system an online application. Essentially this is business software that is accessed using a web browser and is available to staff wherever they may be, provided they have an Internet connection.

Emco is named derived from the words 'Electrical Mechanical Company' and as such they are an all around Electrical-Mechanical Service Contractor aiming at the Gulf Market with Bahrain as a prime target. Emco specialises in the field of Electrical, Electronic, Refrigeration, Air Conditioning, Plumbing, Drainage, Fire Fighting and Maintenance work.

In 2008 I was asked to be involved in the construction of their new Content Management driven website.

Plan UK distribute teaching resources to educators around the globe. This project's requirements were to provide a space where all of the resources could be uploaded, tagged and stored for download anywhere in the world.

Organisations that undertake many marketing initiatives need to be able to add new content, as well as update existing content, quickly and easily. Depending on outside agencies to change content on their website would place shackles on how effective they are in spreading the word about efficient use of water within in the UK.

I delivered a Content Management Systems (CMS) using a well known open source solution and continue to support Waterwise staff in using it.