Local Unmentionables: Notes on YOUR corner of the world

Rick, Mitt, Newt or Ron are going to have a field day. Since March 1 the Netherlands has a mobile euthanasia team. I can see the headlines; McDeath™ or Dr. Death housecalls...

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fvk%2Fnl%2F2672%2FWetenschap-Gezondheid%2Farticle%2Fdetail%2F3214740%2F2012%2F03%2F03%2FAl-60-aanmeldingen-voor-levenseindekliniek.dhtml

"Death squads" will do, I think.

Random killings in the street! Pensioners cut down in their prime! Oh the godless socialist horror!

I saw that article about the mobile thing. That's all I will say.

What I did last weekend. Not ride, that's for sure, though it was sunny and 70F!

Special note: On Sunday I wore my Twine t-shirt for luck and transitive awesomeness, but it was chilly enough at Adobe SF that I kept my sweater on most of the time.

We placed in the semi-final round of judging, but we hadn't thought about pitching the "how will this make me money if I invest" question that apparently the judges were all about. Lesson learned.

ddt

Cool app. There should be opportunities to "monetise" that.

Tony, we do that shameless selling of crap to people with a Z here!

"MonetiSe", my arse.

ddt

Being a colonial subordinate, I still speak the Queen's English...

[edit] And no, it's your "ass", but my "arse"...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2012 06:41PM by Tony Leggett.

... and on that bombshell: </talkingaboutasses>

ddt

Sweet! Nothing like doing to learn. I like the logo, and where the video was going at the end with crowdsourcing the data collection. Maybe there are other interesting sources to pull in, like https://pachube.com/feeds?q=air+quality&status=all
I always have an issue with the attention needed to use AR. What if it ran in the background with Location Services, and simply vibrated or otherwise notified you when you were within range of a hotspot? That would be educational and not be a hard sell. Maybe even make a game of avoiding these spots.

Monetizing doesn't seem to be the point of this work, but I suppose you can be supported by the companies who use it for good PR. There will probably be a bigger call for good data and awareness as social media mobilizes people to be corporate watchdogs (see: Foxconn).

Another facet that is worth exploring is, what's the next step beyond awareness? Give people an action item, whether it's writing your city council or the owner of the problem area, sharing the info, contributing to a discussion.

Thanks for taking the time to look at it.

I'll pass this along, but you wouldn't believe how many data sources there are -- part of the problem was trying to get them to scope down from "we have to show air, water, carbon footprint, energy production, coal production, fracking, solar, landfills, and a dozen other things".

That's an interesting idea about Location Services, but practically it'd mean that your phone would be buzzing almost constantly in any urban/suburban area. What the video didn't show is the map interface, which wasn't functional fully in time to show then.

The "next step" is something we thought about trying to do -- look at the third wireframe photo where there's... whoops, TKTKTK -- context-sensitive options to "take action". But we weren't able to do user testing on that, and so figure out how best to do it. It'd raise action-participation to have a big button on the screen, but to do what? Putting it in the info popup seemed to make sense. But then again, we didn't have time to think through what action people could take.

The photo component was hoped to lead to more engagement and action on top of awareness -- and as for sharing, we did plan to put in Twitter integration, but all we could get working at the moment was tweeting the photo (and maybe a screen shot of the map at the moment, but what good would that do?).

Still, all these data sets are huge and arcane, and being able to visualize them in situ (another thing: you'd be able to tap on/off the toxin buttons, so you could quickly and visually compare/contrast, say, O3 and CO2 levels) is something that hasn't been done yet.

Passed along the feedback -- thanks!

ddt

DPBD: So, got accepted to the WSJ Data Privacy Hackathon at NYU 13-15 April. Any Sporkers going to be around there and then?

ddt

I'm not going to tell you.

It's five past midday on St Patricks day so I've finished my one and only guinness for the year.

Cheers all!

you have me beat by one a year. cheers

When St. Patrick first came to Ireland, he went forth into the countryside to spread the Holy Word. He spoke to a great assembly of the people who had gathered in a grassy meadow to hear him. A first they gave heed to his words, but then they began to murmur, pointing at the grass by their feet and serpents revealed therein. St. Patrick grew wroth, and with great anger spoke unto the people, saying: "I want these mother-fucking snakes off this mother-fucking plain!"

And so Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland.

Thankyou St Samuel Jackson...

Went down to one of my local pubs about a kilometre from where I live. Nice pub, nice food, nice afternoon.

Raining horribly by the time I want to go home...

Dilemma: Wait for a wheelchair cab that may never come for a $10 fare (and grumpy pissed off cabbie) or just run the gauntlet. Decision: Convince my flatmate she should wait for my sister to pick her up (did NOT want to be racing home in the rain to chorus of "stop! wait for me!") and I run the gauntlet.

Made it home no dramas, but man - I am wetter than a college girl on spring break...

Happy St Pats!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2012 11:28PM by Tony Leggett.

Samuel Jackson is black irish? Never knew.
Thanks for that ever so slightly sacrilegiously slainte-d joke. (See what I did there? Slanted turned into Irish Slainte with a d. I crack myself up!)

I ran the four-mile Shamrock RUn in downtown Indianapolis this morning. Only race I've ever done where there's a big tent selling beer just past the finish line.

Glorious morning for a run here.

just got back. We wondered what was going on down there. Beautiful day.
Here is said tent.