We recently had the opportunity to upgrade the hotspot at Madison Square Park, an I thought I would take this opportunity to show off our latest hardware. The hardware that we installed is the latest outdoor, all-weather gear from Metrix and Soekris. We use a high-powered Wi-Fi radio that provides wireless service throughout the park, including the new park space between 5th and Broadway north of 23rd street.
This morning, Mayor Mike Bloomberg unveiled New York City’s long-awaited Big Apps contest. Big Apps seeks to promote the Internet industry in the Big Apple (it’s sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation) and make local government more transparent.
I’ve been following the evolution of open data initiatives at the municipal level for about a year now, and was really hoping that New York was going to set the bar for future efforts across the country. It doesn’t. In fact it’s hard to understand why some notable local tech superstars like investors Fred Wilson and John Borthwick would sign on to such a lame effort.
First of all, the prize structure doesn’t make sense. First prize is $5,000 and dinner with Bloomie himself. No commitment to fund, adopt, promote or license the app for citywide use. People that build city apps want to engage the public and the investor community, not the city’s political elite. I bet they’d rather have dinner with Andrew Raisej.
Second, despite the fact that the project is primarily aimed at stimulating new business development (it’s coming from the econ dev folks) the rules require all entrants to grant the city a one-year license to distribute the app freely. So anyone thinking of building a paid iPhone app, you’re shit out of luck.
Finally, and most importantly, the NYC Data Mine that is supposed to be the raw materials for these apps, is more of an NYC Data Dump than anything else. Browsing through the 100+ datasets posted this afternoon to the city’s site, you see that about half are just boundary shapefiles easily downloaded or licensed through existing channels. The other half are a dog’s breakfast of static datasets (New! Updated monthly!) in every format from Excel to Access to (gag!) SAS. Hello, people, its 2009. API+XML FTW! Just to take one example, I can’t wait to see what fascinating mashups stem from the historic release of the Department of Consumer Affairs’ list of licensed electronic shops. Because what the world is really lacking is more information about the location of electronics retailers. What this Data Dump looks like is the collected attachments received in reponse to the poor bureaucrat who had to twist every department’s arms for one dataset, so the city could say every department contributed.
As someone who’s spent time brainstorming with government agencies about open data ecosystems, I’m saddened to see that the city has engineered this program for maximum political impact, minimal risk and mediocre innovation. It’s municipal vaporware.
p.s. Guys, you forgot to include the website URL in your press release.
p.p.s The one cool thing they did was used Challenge Post to host the site. Thanks BetaWorks!
Publishing your exact location regularly to everyone on the Internet? To some it sounds like a Orwellian nightmare. But this is exactly what Google Latitude allows you to do. Google can grab GPS location data from your mobile phone and it gives you the option of publishing your location at the city level or your exact GPS derived location (if your device supports location that is). You can share your location among a trusted group of friends or it offers you a snippet of code to link to a map you can integrate into a website or blog post. Not to mention it can update your Google Talk status with your location.
I can’t speak for other devices but on the Iphone there is no client required. The Safari web browser for the Iphone in version 3.0 supports the W3C Location API. So all you need to do is enroll your account and surf to http://www.google.com/latitude/. The Iphone OS will ask you if you wish to share your location, if you accept Latitude updates it’s database with your current location. That simple really. The Latitude interface will also show the location of any friends that have elected to share their location with you.
On Sunday I am participating in a fundraiser where I am going to row a 25 foot wooden boat around the island of Manhattan. (if you want to help support youth development in the South Bronx visit my pledge site http://rockingmanhattan.kintera.org/dustintodd). I thought it would be neat to use the Latitude public location badge functionality to show our progress through our 28 mile journey. Latitude offers an almost perfect solution for this. If you visit the Latitude public badge page you can enable the public badge feature (the default is disable.. wise choice) and offers a snippet of HTML code that allows you to include the map with your location displayed on any website or BLOG.
I have included the HTML in this post hopefully when you view this post the map will show my current location. Check back on Sunday the 4th to see us rowing around Manhattan.
We were very excited when the team at Mashable asked NYCwireless and Bway.net to bring free Wi-Fi to their Summer of Social Good Conference at the 92st Y. The event is going on today, and you can read more about it (and watch a Livestream of the speakers) at Mashable.com:
Today Mashable is hosting our first ever Social Good Conference, a one-day educational event celebrating the finale of the Summer of Social Good charitable campaign. The event is being held at the prestigious 92nd Street Y in New York City, but you don’t have to be in New York to watch or participate! Below we’ve embedded a live stream of the event so you can view presentations from well known and respected organizations and professionals as well as take part in discussions via chat.
We’ve got some serious bandwidth at the conference (2x ADSL 2+ internet connections) and some serious gear here (Cisco 1130 Lightweight Access Points, Soekris routers, and some new APs from Ubiquiti). If you are at the conference, let us know how the network is working for you. If you’re not, be sure to check out the Livestream.
Do you do your best thinking on a bike racing through traffic? Do you get inspired in the shower? Is blaring techno music the only way you can clear writer’s block?
If so, then join us at the second of a series of Breakout! Beta Sessions taking place in Manhattan in August and September. We bring the Wi-Fi and some gimmicks to get your creative and collaborative juices flowing. This Friday, we’re going to brainstorm locations for outdoor coworking during the festival in September, and record them on the Breakout! Wiki. We want to get off the beaten path, and find the craziest, most stimulating, electric environments for creative work in New York City.
When: Friday, August 14th, 2009, 3 pm – 6 pm
Where: Bryant Park (Look for the Breakout! signs and balloons in the southwest corner along 40th St. – see map)
7 to 5th Ave, B, D, F, V to 42nd St – Bryant Park
RSVP: Via Meetup or email elysse@breakoutfestival.org
Breakout! BETA Sessions happen every Friday through September 4, in preparation for the Breakout! Escape From the Office Festival September 17–October 16.
