Uncategorized – Page 2 – Noel Hidalgo's Weblog

There is something very wrong with [Uber]. It’s like Richard Nixon came back from the grave and is running a startup.

Today, we launch www.citygram.nyc — subscribe to NYC #OpenData subjects & locations.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Citygram.NYC, a notification platform that works with New York City’s Open Data. Citygram allows you to subscribe to events in Open Data sets that happen near you. You can choose to receive daily SMS updates, or a weekly email digest.

Competing visions of the future of the city’s digital engagement with the public came to light Wednesday morning in a hearing on proposed legislation to create a city petition platform similar to the White House’s We The People site.

NY City Council pushes Obama petition model, City Hall resists | Capital New York (via betanyc)

You can set a message like “!Gather 7pm at 1st and Main” or “@press please don’t photo faces” or “#Legal Aid is 2125551212″, or even just motivational messages “#staycalm #noviolence” or “#theworldiswatching”. If people like what you have written, they can change their status that message, and rebroadcast another 30 feet in whatever direction they are headed. Again, it is basically Twitter combined with doing “the wave” at a football game, except the wave is powered by these little super computers radio stations we have in our pockets.

Hacking on a basic Bluetooth mesh-y concept – n∞fr∞’s open web

In the summer of 2009, The New York Senate was the first government organization to post code to GitHub, and that fall, Washington DC quickly followed suit. By 2011, cities like Miami, Chicago, and New York; Australian, Canadian, and British government initiatives like GOV.UK; and US Federal agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, General Services Administration, NASA, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were all coding in the open as they began to reimagine government for the 21st century.

Government opens up: 10k active government users on GitHub

Penate scoffs at those in the United States who suggest that Central American kids are using the violence merely as an excuse to seek asylum in the United States. “How can you argue with it?” he says. “You see it every day here on TV, kids getting recruited by the gangs, and if they refuse to join they get shot.” Ideally, he says, the ATF would have one or two people in each Northern Triangle country. He hadn’t heard that his agency had passed on the emergency funding. “That money would come in very handy,” he said ruefully. That he is doing his work with so little support symbolizes the U.S. attitude toward its responsibilities in Central America. We turn from the refugees fleeing north, as our firepower heads south.

Guns Fueling Immigration from Central America Come from U.S. | New Republic

Hopefully we can put the government in the people’s pocket

De Blasio Signs Bill, Embraces Civic Tech Community for City Record Online

Sharing an office with a direct competitor could be a contentious working situation in some business’, but not for Rosen or Drumm. Although technically competitors for clients, the different Drupal vendors are in constant contact, not only because they come from an intimate group of friends, but because of the open source business model that Drupal is based on.

Drupal Nation: Software to Power the Left | Digidave

“There are so many civic hacking lessons to re-learn from the #CivicSpace days.” – Noel Hidalgo