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May 23, 2013
Codebunk

Codebunk looks like a neat in the browser editor for writing and testing code. Particularly useful, I think, for those learning to program.
Here’s a video that demonstrates how it works.

May 23, 2013
Content Management Tools for Community Boards

"Community board staff spend hours collating and retyping meeting minutes into “dumb” Word documents; community members interested in a particular issue find it nearly impossible to construct a history of that issue from the available information; and community board members themselves often must rely on institutional memory...."

 

Ed note: This looks like a great idea to me -- neighborhood and community organizations get hamstrung by their lack of ability to access their own history easily.  This is only available in New York now, but can you see this benefitting organizations in your community?   What would you change to make it more effective in your context?

May 23, 2013
Loomio

Loomio looks like a neat tool for groups to discuss a topic and to come to decisions. Often online discussions just go nowhere and don’t result in specific actions. Maybe this is a solution to that problem?
Here’s a video.

May 23, 2013
Spread of the Hack: UK Councils call in the geeks to help them solve local problems

Councils across the country are using open innovation events such as hacks, challenges, camps and jams, as well as creating innovation centres, to help them use cutting-edge technology and new ways of thinking to cope with the gloom associated with disappearing budgets.

From The Guardian, article by Lucy Watt and Quentin Johns

 

 

May 22, 2013
Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

  • John Lanchester: Google Glass
  • Opinionated Infrastructure: ‘Pon the Floor, Impact, MobileFirst and Zend
  • More information on Networked Councillor
  • “We Want More”… Introducing Learning Pool Encore!
  • Opening up
  • Intranet WordPress theme now on GitHub
  • Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer
May 14, 2013
If we’re not building relationships, we’re doing it wrong... Hackers + Planners + Citizens

 

From OpenPlans.org

May 13, 2013
A New Site Puts The Hyper Into Hyperlocal

A startup based in downtown Boston, BlockAvenue has divided up the U.S. into a small pieces, and then aggregated as much data as it can find to start telling stories about them.

From FastCompany.com:

May 13, 2013
Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

  • Mind the (Agility) Gap
  • Big Lottery Fund announces £15 million of funding for digital skills
  • MOOC’s – What Are They?
  • The Camden Challenge is Open!
  • Systems and symptoms
  • The end of pat-on-the-head digital engagement
  • There Is More To The US Open Data Policy Than Meets The Eye
  • Open data in extractives: meeting the challenges
  • Scripting News: Blogging 2.0.
  • What People Study When They Study Twitter
May 12, 2013
Pietro Speroni: “Crowdsourcing the History of eDemocracy”

Via the Metagovernment mailing list:, From Italy-based researcher Pietro Speroni di Fenizio (check out his blog or follow him on Twitter):
Hello everybody,
I have been invited to give a talk on the history of eDemocracy for state of the Net.
I am also writing a book on eDemocracy, and the history will surely be a chapter into it, too
For all this I am setting up a google spreadsheet on which to base the talk. I would like to invite people from here to go to the page, and check that their favorite eDem projects are there. Please add also the starting (and ending if any) date of the projects. Also anything else you think should go there, please add it.
On the starting date cell I am adding a comment over where I found that information.
You will notice also that I have started also some context information and pre-internet ones that are necessary to integrate the info in a context.
The Google Doc is growing nicely. If you have any important milestones to add, please do.
 

May 10, 2013
Event: Crowsourcing the New Digital Economy

More than 40 speakers at the conference will inspire and equip the audience of enterprise executives and business leaders with the tools and practices on how crowdsourcing can benefit their bottom line and effectiveness.

 

May 9, 2013
Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

  • How we used email as a customer support system at mySociety
  • Ten propositions about digital technology later in life
  • Reflections on WebSci13
  • John Carey on the Internet
  • Time for revolution rather than evolution?
  • Capsule, The Developer’s Code Journal
  • Scripting News: The Fargo-WordPress connection.
  • Simple Map Making With Google Fusion Tables
May 5, 2013
What Is Digital Engagement?

Here’s a working definition I used during today’s presentation at the 2013 Participatory Budgeting Conference:
Digital Engagement
The use of information and communications technologies to support, enhance or extend public participation and civic engagement processes.
Another one comes to us via Steph Gray:
Digital Engagement uses digital tools and channels to find, listen to and mobilise a community around an issue, maybe getting them to talk about it, give you their views or take action in pursuit of a cause they care about.
Any others? Thoughts?

May 2, 2013
How to pull Building Construction Permit data for Counties from the US Census Bureau

How to pull Building Construction Permit data for Counties from the US Census Bureau
For a recent custom data request, I pulled building construction permit data for US counties and places (aka cities). Many people don’t realize that the US Census Bureau collects data on building permits by county and place, and makes it publicly available.
Below are step by step instructions for how to pull this building construction permit data from the US Census Bureau’s website. We’ll use Orange County, Florida as an example — but the same  steps apply if you want to pull data for a city.
Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Building Permits by County
The building permits page of the US Census allows you to search for building permits either monthly or yearly, going back to 1996. Not all areas report to the Census Bureau monthly – some only report yearly.
If when you are searching for building permit data you cannot find the county or place you are searching for, go back and change your search to “Yearly.” And there may be cases where building permit data are just NOT available for smaller counties (in terms of population) and smaller cities.
Now, here are the steps to follow:
Step 1: On the building permits page, choose the month and year you want building permit data for.
Home Page where it all begins
Step 2: Pick county or place. Place reports are usually from individual municipalities, but some townships or unincorporated towns also report to the Census Bureau.
Step 3: Pick the state you are interested in finding data from. For our example here, we’ll be looking at Counties in Florida.
Steps 2 & 3
Step 4: Click “Submit”
Step 5: On the next page, pick the county you want data from. Let’s pick Orange County. If the county we were looking for wasn’t listed, that would mean some of the municipalities in the county only report yearly, so we’d have to go back to the prior page and change our time to annual.
We’ll select Orange County as an example
Once you click “Submit” on the second page, you will see the data building permits in Orange County for the month you selected. The information is broken down into permits for Single Family, Two Family, Three and Four Family, Five and More Family, and the total for all building types. In March of 2013, we can see that 353 Single Family building permits were reported, that there were 353 units in those buildings and that the construction cost was $76,359,451. We can also see the US Census Bureau’s estimate of building permits including any that may not have been reported (353 for March, so the same number reported.) The chart also includes totals for the year so far.
You will see the data building permits in Orange County for the month you selected
In the very left column of the chart there is a “Browse” button. Clicking on this allows us to compare building permits by county throughout Florida. We can choose to compare building permits by county for a specific type of building, or the total building permits in each county. If we “Browse” Five and More Family buildings, we can see that while Orange county only reported 3 building permits for this building category in March, Miami-Dade reported 13 building permits for the county. Clicking on the “Profile” button for Orange County brings us back to the building permits by county page for Orange that we came from.
This allows us to compare building permits by county throughout Florida
At the top of this page, you will see drop down boxes for month and year. If you want to compare building permits for Orange County for March in different years, you can pick 2012 from the drop down menu and see that Orange County reports only 267 building permits issued in March of 2012 – meaning nearly 100 more building permits were reported in 2013.
If you want to compare building permits for Orange County for March in different years, you can pick 2012 from the drop down menu
 
I hope the above steps and screenshots save you time when pulling building construction permit data for counties. If you need to pull lots of building permit data, like all monthly permit data since 1996, or if you need to pull building permit data AND other types of Census data (like year structure built, median value, median rent, etc.), you should check out Cubit’s custom data pull option.

May 2, 2013
How to pull Building Construction Permit data for Counties from the US Census Bureau

How to pull Building Construction Permit data for Counties from the US Census Bureau
For a recent custom data request, I pulled building construction permit data for US counties and places (aka cities). Many people don’t realize that the US Census Bureau collects data on building permits by county and place, and makes it publicly available.
Below are step by step instructions for how to pull this building construction permit data from the US Census Bureau’s website. We’ll use Orange County, Florida as an example — but the same  steps apply if you want to pull data for a city.
Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Building Permits by County
The building permits page of the US Census allows you to search for building permits either monthly or yearly, going back to 1996. Not all areas report to the Census Bureau monthly – some only report yearly.
If when you are searching for building permit data you cannot find the county or place you are searching for, go back and change your search to “Yearly.” And there may be cases where building permit data are just NOT available for smaller counties (in terms of population) and smaller cities.
Now, here are the steps to follow:
Step 1: On the building permits page, choose the month and year you want building permit data for.
Home Page where it all begins
Step 2: Pick county or place. Place reports are usually from individual municipalities, but some townships or unincorporated towns also report to the Census Bureau.
Step 3: Pick the state you are interested in finding data from. For our example here, we’ll be looking at Counties in Florida.
Steps 2 and 3
Step 4: Click “Submit”
Step 5: On the next page, pick the county you want data from. Let’s pick Orange County. If the county we were looking for wasn’t listed, that would mean some of the municipalities in the county only report yearly, so we’d have to go back to the prior page and change our time to annual.
We’ll select Orange County as an example
Once you click “Submit” on the second page, you will see the data building permits in Orange County for the month you selected. The information is broken down into permits for Single Family, Two Family, Three and Four Family, Five and More Family, and the total for all building types. In March of 2013, we can see that 353 Single Family building permits were reported, that there were 353 units in those buildings and that the construction cost was $76,359,451. We can also see the US Census Bureau’s estimate of building permits including any that may not have been reported (353 for March, so the same number reported.) The chart also includes totals for the year so far.
You will see the data building permits in Orange County for the month you selected
In the very left column of the chart there is a “Browse” button. Clicking on this allows us to compare building permits by county throughout Florida. We can choose to compare building permits by county for a specific type of building, or the total building permits in each county. If we “Browse” Five and More Family buildings, we can see that while Orange county only reported 3 building permits for this building category in March, Miami-Dade reported 13 building permits for the county. Clicking on the “Profile” button for Orange County brings us back to the building permits by county page for Orange that we came from.
This allows us to compare building permits by county throughout Florida
At the top of this page, you will see drop down boxes for month and year. If you want to compare building permits for Orange County for March in different years, you can pick 2012 from the drop down menu and see that Orange County reports only 267 building permits issued in March of 2012 – meaning nearly 100 more building permits were reported in 2013.
If you want to compare building permits for Orange County for March in different years, you can pick 2012 from the drop down menu
 
I hope the above steps and screenshots save you time when pulling building construction permit data for counties. If you need to pull lots of building permit data, like all monthly permit data since 1996, or if you need to pull building permit data AND other types of Census data (like year structure built, median value, median rent, etc.), you should check out Cubit’s custom data pull option.

May 1, 2013
A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie

I don’t understand how this is even possible but… wow.

May 1, 2013
Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

  • With not for
  • From the ground up (or how to encourage a school boy)
  • How councils are crowdfunding community projects
  • ★ Web Apps vs. Native Apps Is Still a Thing
  • Devon County Council selects Huddle to support Targeted Family Support Initiative
  • GOV.UK at 6 months old
  • Small data helping in your neighbourhood – anyone can do it
  • MOOCs: more action in 1 year than last 1000 years
  • Bluelightcamp: Discussion on the network of networks and digital neighbourhoods
  • Cyber-bullying, Internet Safety and Social Media Surgeries
  • The Value of Open Data – Don’t Measure Growth, Measure Destruction
April 24, 2013
Civic Hacka-what?

Hack4Colorado will be just one of 100 civic hackathons happening all across the U.S. on the weekend of May 31, all under the umbrella of the National Day of Civic Hacking. A hackathon is an event where computer programmers and others in the field of software development, as well as graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects. These events are food and caffeine fueled events where innovation happens and new ideas are born.
What does it mean to participate and support a Civic Hackathon? Well, it means different things to different people.
Some people come with visions of venture funding, a great new start up, building a company and becoming the next Techstars company. That’s a great aspiration but that’s not really the primary goal of a “Civic” hackathon. It could happen. You could build an app that really blows up and you form a company and sell this app to every city, state and municipality and retire like Ted Turner. But a Civic hackathon has a different spin. It’s about the community we live in and giving something meaningful back to that community.
There are others who come because they are just sick and tired of not having an app that tells them to move their car because it’s street sweeping day or they are desperate for an app that really addresses the Veterans struggle to overcome PTSD. At our last organizing committee meeting, one of our members was talking about their frustration of not being able to get live bus data to help her catch the next bus without standing around waiting. Can you get your head around that one? Imagine, you open the app on your mobile device or tablet and it tells you that the #6 will be at your stop in 2 minutes- better run!
Why will you come, invest a weekend, hack, collaborate, and compete? For the challenge? The food? The fun? The comraderie? To give back? For the prizes? Hack4Colorado promises to be challenging, super cool and if you’re good, very rewarding!
The organizers come from OpenColorado, PlaceMatters, and Executive Lattice. The sponsors include some great local companies like iTriage, SendGrid, ReadyTalk, Noodles & Company, Illegal Petes, Galvanize, COIN, and Commerce Kitchen.
Check it out at www.hack4colorado.com. Registration is open for the event, May 31st – June 2nd, and we’d love to have you! Come on and join the Geeks for the Good of Colorado! Follow @Hack4Co on Twitter for more updates.
If you missed the Hackathon we put on last year, you can read a re-cap of it here.
Re-posted with permission from writer, Ann Spoor. Original post here.
 

April 24, 2013
Historic Home Sales Data by Zip Code

Image from Images_of_Money
Recently for a custom data request project, I needed to find historic home sales data by zip code for the entire United States. While the US Census Bureau has median home value data for ZCTAs, you can’t get count of sales or sale prices for individual home sales data from the Census datasets.
In addition to the Census Bureau, the county appraisal districts are a fantastic source of real estate data. But in Texas, you can’t even get home sales data from the county appraisal districts, because Texas law makes reporting home sales optional. And even for states unlike Texas that do require the reporting of home sales, it would be painful, time consuming, and expensive to contact every county appraisal district/office in the United States & request this data.
Below are all of the options that I explored to get historic home sales data by zip code for the entire US.
2 Viable Options to get Historic Home Sales Data by Zip Code

  1. BEST OPTION – Purchase the data from DataQuick. DataQuick has been selling real estate data for over 30 years. They have reasonable prices. For example, I could get 2 data points (like number of sales and median sale price) for each MONTH for zip codes in the US for the past 10 years for $10,000. If I needed historic home sales data by zip code for the previous 10 years, that price was $7,000. And if I wanted additional data points in addition to the 2 mentioned above, each data point was $1,000 for 10 years. This pricing structure was easy for me to understand and to communicate. Also, DataQuick returned my phone calls quickly and were pleasant to work with. Their turnaround time for the data was 4 days. But there’s one small catch – they only have 70% coverage of US zip codes – which I understand to be based on population. Basically, you can get home sales data for the 70% of US zip codes with the largest populations. For the custom data request research that I was doing, 70% of zip codes was good enough. One could assume that the smaller the population, the fewer home sales are likely. But if you HAVE to have a higher coverage level than 70% of US zip codes, I did find a second option for you.
  2. Buy the data for Real Quest. Real Quest is a division of CoreLogic – which is also a company that sells real estate data. The benefit of Real Quest is that they have data for 98 to 99% of residential properties in the US. That’s pretty impressive. What wasn’t impressive was their customer service or their pricing. I never could get a price quote from the sales person who was “helping” me. The best I could get is that “we’ll work with you if you have a $50K budget.” The other specific issue that bugged me was that they kept asking me to identify my client who I was doing research for – which I wasn’t comfortable doing without permission from my client. Since I had such a poor experience with their sales person, I hesitate to even list these guys as a viable option. But I can’t overlook the 98-99% data coverage.

Not Viable Options For My Purposes But These Options Might Work For You 

  1. Policy Map. Policy Map looks to be a pretty sweet web app for pulling demographic data. I keep meaning to sign up for a free trial & check ‘em out, but it never gets to the top of my to-do list. Policy Map wasn’t a good fit for this particular request, because their sales data only went back to 2006. It appears they have number of sales, median sale price, aggregate sales amounts & loan-to-value ratios on a quarterly basis for 2007 to 2012 and on an annual basis for 2006 to 2007. 1 note: you can’t access this data as part of the Free Account.
  2. Regional Multiple Listing Services (MLS). A real estate multiple listing service is basically a shared database of that allows real estate brokers & realtors to see what homes are for sale & have currently sold in the past. There are 900+ regional multiple listing services in the United State. During my research, someone told me that there are 935 MLSs over the phone & I haven’t been able to verify it. I did find this link with data sources indicating that the number is between 900 and 1000. And then I found to buy access to 1 MLS would be $350. A rough estimate of 1,000 MLS x $350 for access = $350K. And if that price point is no problem, I think [emphasis on think – I stopped digging into this option at this point] you have to be a realtor/have a real estate license to get access to a MLS.
  3. Real Estate data APIs like Trulia & Zillow. Using an API like Trulia or Zillow to get sales data was my idea for where to go to get historic home sales data by zip code. But when Anthony actually read the terms of service for the APIs, it was against the terms & service of the APIs for us to use them in such a way that we could pull all current & historic sales data for the US. Both Trulia & Zillow implement throttling limits, which I presume, prevents someone from downloading their entire database.
  4. National Association of Realtors. While they have home sales data, they don’t have it at the zip code level.
  5. Realtor.com. These guys never emailed or called me back.

I hope this information saves you some serious time, because it took me awhile to piece it all together. If you know of another way to get historic home sales data for US zip codes, please contact me. I’m interested!

April 24, 2013
Historic Home Sales Data by Zip Code

Image from Images_of_Money
Recently for a custom data request project, I needed to find historic home sales data by zip code for the entire United States. While the US Census Bureau has median home value data for ZCTAs, you can’t get count of sales or sale prices for individual home sales data from the Census datasets.
In addition to the Census Bureau, the county appraisal districts are a fantastic source of real estate data. But in Texas, you can’t even get home sales data from the county appraisal districts, because Texas law makes reporting home sales optional. And even for states unlike Texas that do require the reporting of home sales, it would be painful, time consuming, and expensive to contact every county appraisal district/office in the United States & request this data.
Below are all of the options that I explored to get historic home sales data by zip code for the entire US.
2 Viable Options to get Historic Home Sales Data by Zip Code

  1. BEST OPTION – Purchase the data from DataQuick. DataQuick has been selling real estate data for over 30 years. They have reasonable prices. For example, I could get 2 data points (like number of sales and median sale price) for each MONTH for zip codes in the US for the past 10 years for $10,000. If I needed historic home sales data by zip code for the previous 10 years, that price was $7,000. And if I wanted additional data points in addition to the 2 mentioned above, each data point was $1,000 for 10 years. This pricing structure was easy for me to understand and to communicate. Also, DataQuick returned my phone calls quickly and were pleasant to work with. Their turnaround time for the data was 4 days. But there’s one small catch – they only have 70% coverage of US zip codes – which I understand to be based on population. Basically, you can get home sales data for the 70% of US zip codes with the largest populations. For the custom data request research that I was doing, 70% of zip codes was good enough. One could assume that the smaller the population, the fewer home sales are likely. But if you HAVE to have a higher coverage level than 70% of US zip codes, I did find a second option for you.
  2. Buy the data for Real Quest. Real Quest is a division of CoreLogic – which is also a company that sells real estate data. The benefit of Real Quest is that they have data for 98 to 99% of residential properties in the US. That’s pretty impressive. What wasn’t impressive was their customer service or their pricing. I never could get a price quote from the sales person who was “helping” me. The best I could get is that “we’ll work with you if you have a $50K budget.” The other specific issue that bugged me was that they kept asking me to identify my client who I was doing research for – which I wasn’t comfortable doing without permission from my client. Since I had such a poor experience with their sales person, I hesitate to even list these guys as a viable option. But I can’t overlook the 98-99% data coverage.

Not Viable Options For My Purposes But These Options Might Work For You 

  1. Policy Map. Policy Map looks to be a pretty sweet web app for pulling demographic data. I keep meaning to sign up for a free trial & check ‘em out, but it never gets to the top of my to-do list. Policy Map wasn’t a good fit for this particular request, because their sales data only went back to 2006. It appears they have number of sales, median sale price, aggregate sales amounts & loan-to-value ratios on a quarterly basis for 2007 to 2012 and on an annual basis for 2006 to 2007. 1 note: you can’t access this data as part of the Free Account.
  2. Regional Multiple Listing Services (MLS). A real estate multiple listing service is basically a shared database of that allows real estate brokers & realtors to see what homes are for sale & have currently sold in the past. There are 900+ regional multiple listing services in the United State. During my research, someone told me that there are 935 MLSs over the phone & I haven’t been able to verify it. I did find this link with data sources indicating that the number is between 900 and 1000. And then I found to buy access to 1 MLS would be $350. A rough estimate of 1,000 MLS x $350 for access = $350K. And if that price point is no problem, I think [emphasis on think – I stopped digging into this option at this point] you have to be a realtor/have a real estate license to get access to a MLS.
  3. Real Estate data APIs like Trulia & Zillow. Using an API like Trulia or Zillow to get sales data was my idea for where to go to get historic home sales data by zip code. But when Anthony actually read the terms of service for the APIs, it was against the terms & service of the APIs for us to use them in such a way that we could pull all current & historic sales data for the US. Both Trulia & Zillow implement throttling limits, which I presume, prevents someone from downloading their entire database.
  4. National Association of Realtors. While they have home sales data, they don’t have it at the zip code level.
  5. Realtor.com. These guys never emailed or called me back.

I hope this information saves you some serious time, because it took me awhile to piece it all together. If you know of another way to get historic home sales data for US zip codes, please contact me. I’m interested!

April 24, 2013
Update to the Cubit App

Why Redesign The App?
Several problems were coming up repeatedly in customer emails and user tests (where we observe a person using the app). We knew that some tables were too wide for the page. We learned that people wanted larger maps. We discovered later that some folks had a hard time navigating both the scroll of the page and the scroll-to-zoom feature on the maps.
Problem #1: Big Tables
Some tables in the reports were too wide for the page. For some customers, the Race & Origin, Income Distribution and Industries tables were too wide, no matter how wide the browser window. For the rest of the tables, as we added and updated data, things started to get cramped and harder to read.
The Solution:
Reports have more room to breathe.
Allow the report to take up more horizontal space in the app. To do this, we had to move the vertical navigation out of the way. The links to the reports are now, along the top of the page, by the name of the project. You’ll find the reports grouped by category: Demographics, Income, Povery & Jobs, Housing & Transportation and Other.
Problem #2: Big Maps + Scrolling Confusion
People want larger maps for editing and viewing. This one was kind of a freebie. By solving the table problem (above), we increased the size of the maps. But we compounded another problem: scrolling over the map. It happens to me, too. I’m scrolling down the page and start scrolling over a map and the map zooms! It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to. And I can move my mouse off to the side to continue scrolling. BUT. We noticed while watching people that it was a huge distraction. If a person was exploring or creating/updating a drawing, they’d get off course.
The Solution:
Turn off mouse-wheel-scrolling on the map. This solves the accidental zooming problem and allows for more natural scrolling of the page. Zooming is still available via the zoom widget on the map (the more popular way to zoom anyway).
Bonus:
We also introduced some cleanup to the projects dashboard: further reducing the visual clutter, making the text larger, and giving the projects more space to breath so it’s easier to find your projects.
We hope you like the changes we’ve made. As always, if you have any feedback let us know.
 

April 24, 2013
Update to the Cubit App

Why Redesign The App?
Several problems were coming up repeatedly in customer emails and user tests (where we observe a person using the app). We knew that some tables were too wide for the page. We learned that people wanted larger maps. We discovered later that some folks had a hard time navigating both the scroll of the page and the scroll-to-zoom feature on the maps.
Problem #1: Big Tables
Some tables in the reports were too wide for the page. For some customers, the Race & Origin, Income Distribution and Industries tables were too wide, no matter how wide the browser window. For the rest of the tables, as we added and updated data, things started to get cramped and harder to read.
The Solution:
Reports have more room to breathe.
Allow the report to take up more horizontal space in the app. To do this, we had to move the vertical navigation out of the way. The links to the reports are now, along the top of the page, by the name of the project. You’ll find the reports grouped by category: Demographics, Income, Povery & Jobs, Housing & Transportation and Other.
Problem #2: Big Maps + Scrolling Confusion
People want larger maps for editing and viewing. This one was kind of a freebie. By solving the table problem (above), we increased the size of the maps. But we compounded another problem: scrolling over the map. It happens to me, too. I’m scrolling down the page and start scrolling over a map and the map zooms! It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to. And I can move my mouse off to the side to continue scrolling. BUT. We noticed while watching people that it was a huge distraction. If a person was exploring or creating/updating a drawing, they’d get off course.
The Solution:
Turn off mouse-wheel-scrolling on the map. This solves the accidental zooming problem and allows for more natural scrolling of the page. Zooming is still available via the zoom widget on the map (the more popular way to zoom anyway).
Bonus:
We also introduced some cleanup to the projects dashboard: further reducing the visual clutter, making the text larger, and giving the projects more space to breath so it’s easier to find your projects.
We hope you like the changes we’ve made. As always, if you have any feedback let us know.
 

April 22, 2013
3 interesting social reading sites

Reading for me is a solitary activity, I have to admit. But others like being members of reading groups and so on – and who am I to judge them?
I linked recently to an article on Gizmodo asking why ebooks are so much like paper books – in other words, why don’t they innovate with the form a bit more? Here’s three examples of sites or apps that take electronic reading in a more interesting and social direction.

Readmill is a replacement for iBooks on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It places a heavy emphasis on good design and typography and eschews some of Apple’s silly skeuomorphic tendencies. It also enables you to highlight passages while you read, and share them with your friends and followers – and your social group also helps you to discover new books to read.

Subtext is a free iPad app that allows classroom groups to exchange ideas in the pages of digital texts. It’s designed for use in learning environments, and enables a tutor to add in quizzes and assignments too. Here’s a video to explain more:

Copia calls itself a “social ereading platform”. It allows you to make notes in the ‘margains’ of the ebook you are reading, and then to share them with friends and publish them in notebooks. It also features the ability to create reading groups, and have discussions about books which is rather neat.
Copia is available on the desktop or the Android and iOS mobile platforms.
Do you use any social reading apps or sites? Are they even necessary?

April 21, 2013
Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

  • ROUGH JUSTICE: Jo Smith is clearing her name
  • GIS Watch 2012 article: Who is doing what when it comes to technology for transparency, accountability and anti-corruption
  • Goldilocks for grey-haired geeks
  • The market for paid iOS apps isn’t dead
  • Writing guidance for the service design manual
  • How to make your campaign a success
  • Can bureaucrats be interesting when the world demands that they be boring?
  • Constructing a Crime and Justice #opendata wishlist
  • Law, code and architecture
  • Law, code and architecture
April 17, 2013
Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

  • From the centre and here to help
  • Digital Britain 2 – why I don’t think it goes far enough
  • Citizens Agenda – making local democracy more relevant
  • MOOCs: A view from the digital trenches
  • NovoEd, another Stanford MOOC startup, opens small-group learning services to public
  • So what might people want to talk about?
  • Networked decision makers
  • A lesson in public e-policy
  • What Are MOOCs (Good For)? I Don’t Really Know…
  • Blowing up Morozov’s “To Save Everything, Click Here”
  • Let’s broaden the MOOC experiment
April 10, 2013
Bitcoin explained

Useful video.