Writing
725 posts on careers, communication, technology and civic life, since 2005.
Obviously, not going to happen in NYC. But wouldn't it be nice to have a house outside of the city? In the "country" somewhere? Well, my friend Hope mentioned Cob construction to me. It is the process of building with an earth/sand/clay/straw mixture that allows you to really "sculpt" the structure. Durable, eco-friendly, and the…
Kaliya Hamlin pointed me towards Moose Camp in an email earlier today. Kaliya and I have been scheming about DrupalGuild and the opensource cms world a bit. Looks like this might be a good opportunity to talk to a bunch of development shops about the DrupalGuild Concept and Guilds in general as a way to…
EchoDitto Blog as a story this week about how a simple email list can be part of an egovernment solutioon . In the example, a local councilperson asked people on a neighborhood email list about a traffic issue. Michael Silberman (the blogger) pointed out that such a simple technology can have great value (and he seeming…
I am a big fan of sunlight. I believe it makes the best disinfectant. And there is nothing wrong with sites like fundrace or guidestar or the center for responsive politics or they rule that all try to point out the influence and sources of money for politicians and…
Citizens Union and a bunch of other goo-go groups hosted what was supposed to be a civic discussion or debate between the seven declared candidates for city council speaker. IN NYC the council is a body of 51 members who each represent about 150k voters (could be more, could be less based upon the immigrant/citizen…
A few years ago I discovered the first issue of Ready Made Magazine . I think i might have been at an Urban OUtfitters in south beach finding shelter from an afternoon rain shower. It was awesome! filled with home improvement projects and DIY crafts with a high design aesthetic. I subscribed, and with each issue…
This is pretty cool. PocketMOD is a little build and fold your own pocket organizer . I saw it on the Make Magazine blog which is also pretty cool. I'll be posting about Make soon enough. The only problem with PocketMOD, is that you can't fill the data from say, iCAL or some other ics calendar…
Throughout the NYC mayoral campaign I kept on talking to people about how much Bloomberg was spending on “list development” and how outrageous the amount seemed. It was $5 million in May! Well the NYT ran a story earlier this week exposing what the money was going to : [Voter] Lists like this usually include voters’ personal data – the magazines they buy, the cars they drive, their political affiliations. But as the cost of compiling Mr. Bloomberg’s list inched up toward $10 million, not even aides to President Bush, who perfected this sort of voter identification last year, could figure out where the money was going.
The Politicker has a good piece on The NYC Campaign Finance System which provides generous matching funds for participating candidates. It consists of an emai from Molly Watkins at Glover Park Group (she was spokeswoman for the CFB).: The real problem is at the Council level, where incumbents are taking huge payouts to face…
Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft’s desktop software. Oh how those words (from a CNET/NYT article last week) danced across the screen to my delight! I have been waiting for, and wondering when(and even nudging in the case of the NYC Council) government purchasers were going to get hip to the benefits of open source software and open data formats in this county. You have customers like Massachusetts asking for choice and the ability to play vendors off each other, and at the same time, you have vendors looking at an opportunity to compete on a Microsoft control point.” I followed this development a few months ago (can’t find the link)and hoped that it would open the door to open source government procurement policies, and it looks like it might be.