Here at Graphient our thoughts are with those engaged in a higher stakes game than any startup ever could be. This morning I set Tweetdeck to search for “Tehran” for about an hour and watched the messages of hope and revolution stream by. It is amazing to see a technology derided by so many as useless and narcissistic have such a profound effect on world affairs.

Good luck to the Iranian people. And to Twitter: congratulations, your shipment of relevance has arrived.

I’m posting this now because the Open Data movement seems to be getting some traction–at least in Government circles. A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration launched Data.gov a clearing house for government data. Washington D.C. has become a leader in municipal public data, putting some 260 feeds of data out in raw form. And now the UK has decided to get in on the act: Gordon Brown the embattled Prime Minister, announced yesterday that none other than Sir Tim Himself would be heading up the initiative to open  England’s data up to the public.

This was largely damage control after a series of embarrassing disclosures about how members of Parliament expense things, but it is a welcome development all the same.

We here at Graphient wish Sir Tim the best of luck moving forward and very much hope that FreeTime will become the application of choice for those looking at all that data.

Read the BBC article here.