Home » Articles
Share |

Articles in "Tools"

City Forward aims to offer insight into contemporary urban dilemmas

Chris Haller

At one time or another, I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind that if you were in charge, you’d do things differently.  You would do things right.  And for everyone out there who has ever shared that sentiment, City Forward is asking you to put your money where your mouth is.

ImproveSF.org - Collecting ideas from city employees

Janelle Noble

When you think about government, you think about a lot of things. Taxes, parking tickets, police. Government touches each of our lives in ways we may not even notice.  But if there’s one thing government isn’t known for it is openness, engagement, and efficiency. A one way dialogue has kept the public voice muted and progressive technologies that can deliver much needed change at bay.

TileMill - Lowering the barriers to entry into custom cartography

Chris Haller

Hoping to assuage complaints of the learning curve occasionally inherent in GIS software, TileMill, hit the market this past month promising gorgeous custom maps.  The new full-featured map design studio is based on open source technology and funded in part by The Knight Foundation.

The Innovation Generation

Chris Haller

New York City rang in the new year with a new internal innovation software platform.  A division of Spigit’s idea management platform, “Simplicity” is being adopted city-wide in a two-phase roll-out that will eventually include all 300,000 New York City employees.

MobileActive’s Resource for Mobile Data Collection

Chris Haller

Throughout the past year it’s been one of our priorities to highlight people and organizations using emerging technologies in new and inspiring ways.  One of the key trends we’ve noticed in doing this, is the rise of mobile devices in data collection and citizen empowerment.  MobileActive has long been on the forefront of utilizing mobile devices and has grown a global network around using those devices for social change.  

Citytracking - Aiming to Present Urban Data in a Simple and Accessible Yet Beautiful Format

Chris Haller

Since 2005 the Knight News Challenge has been awarding money for innovative ideas in their search for “bold community news and social media experiments”.  The challenge, part of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has invested  millions of dollars into ideas that “develop platforms, tools and services to inform and transform”.  One of this year’s winners, Citytracking, aims to present city data in a simple and accessible yet beautiful format.  

Apps.gov

Chris Haller

As a federal agency, the thought of Web2.0 may elicit fearful reactions.  While your agency may be actively looking to broaden public engagement efforts and may very well want to utilize Web2.0 to its fullest extent, the technology brings about questions of security, government regulations, archiving, and cost to maintain.  To assuage those fears, let me introduce you to Apps.Gov.

Editing Geo-Tagged Photos Using Google Picasa

Michael Hinke

We’ve been playing around with making maps from geotagged photos for the last couple of years. In terms of hardware, we’ve talked about how you can use the iPhone and iPhone apps to geo-tag photos and upload the photos to the web. As far as geo-tagging cameras go, there are a number of different brands of GPS-enabled cameras out there. The College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado recently purchased several  Panasonic Lumix cameras. I like this camera because:

The Guardian’s Pledge Tracker

Chris Haller

With daily promises being doled out by elected or trying-to-be-elected officials, have you ever pondered how many of them keep their word?  When Britain’s newly elected Coalition Government released a declaration itemizing all promises they had agreed to; local journalists seized the opportunity to seek accountability for lawmaker’s actions.  What resulted is Pledge Tracker, a tool for keeping tabs on promises kept and unkept and most importantly, those that would have otherwise been forgotten.  

Twitterplan and PlanningAlerts highlight Government2.0 in Planning

Chris Haller

As an active member of your community, you’re probably aware of any modifications your neighbors are planning to their homes.  But what about the empty lot six blocks away or your favorite hole-in-the-wall cafe down the street?  Even active community members have trouble keeping up with all the planning projects in their area, since it requires continually monitoring their municipality’s website.