Comments on: Open City

By: Michael Wells

Michael Wells — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:41:30 +0000

I was thinking, there are a number of iPhone apps that provide this kind of information — for the U.S. at least. Opening municipal databases is good, but the booming smart phone market is getting way ahead of government. I loaded a few before our recent vacation in the Midwest:
• Urban Spoon — Restaurants near your location.
• Fandango — Movies in any city or by zip code.
• Localvore — What’s in season in your area, and nearby organic markets.
• AroundMe – Banks, bars, coffeehouses, gas stations, hospitals, hotels, parking, restaurants, etc. near your location.
• AAA Discounts — Shopping bargains for members.

Of course these are only a few of the 75,000 apps out there.

I don’t know what’s available for other smart phones, but I imagine there are, or will be, similar sites.

By: Michael Wells

Michael Wells — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:38:22 +0000

Reminds me of the iPhone app I got last week — PDXBus for Portland transit. It shows upcoming real-time arrivals of transit (bus, light rail, streetcar) at any stop. I’ve got all of the 8 stops I regularly use bookmarked, so I just hit say “NW 32 & Thurman” for the bus stop 2 blocks from my house or “Streetcar North” for the streetcar stop a block from my office.

I can see where the bus is on Google Maps, look at the schedule for any route, get route & detour alerts. It also has a feature that produces a flashing blue light to signal a bus driver at night.

By: Creative Class: Open City | The Daily MBA

Creative Class: Open City | The Daily MBA — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:24:55 +0000

[...] all city documents are freely open to review) is a great thing. San Francisco is starting this but Vancouver made it a law (or motion, their Canadian). Open city data is the first step in Open Source [...]