Exclusives

BLOG POST

Mojave, Calif. - This morning I watched a space ship take off. The SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan and funded by Microsoft gazillionaire Paul Allen, made it to just above 100 km (62 miles or, according to the rocket's own systems, 328,491 feet). That's space, baby: high enough so pilot Mike Melvill could see "white clouds above the LA basin [that] looked like snow on the ground."<br /> <br /> The craft, carried to 50,000 feet by a mother ship called the White Knight (it looks a lot like the White Star from <a href="http://www.infinicorp.com/VEX/starships/white-star-medium-cruiser.htm"><em>Babylon 5</em></a>

June 21 - Anonymous

FEATURE

June 21 - Justin Hollander, Cuauhtemoc Perez, Ethan Bindernagel

BLOG POST

David Flether's <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110120/">Government and Technology Weblog</a> frequently makes for great reading. Today he discusses <a href="https://www.core.gov/">CORE.GOV - Component Organization and Registration Environment</a>.<br /> <br /> CORE.gov uses the <a href="http://www.collab.net/products/enterprise_edition/index.html">CollabNet SourceCast</a> tool for sharing and tracking business and technical components available as part of the Federal Enterprise Architecture.<br /> <br /> Now I'm not sure I entirely understand this, since it is heavily buzzworded: <br /> <br /> <blockquote><img src="https://www.

June 18 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

Five years ago, in an article titled "<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20011122182720/linuxpower.org/display.php?id=143">GRASS Is Now Greener</a>" [Linuxpower, Oct 1999] , I had written about the significance of the <a href="http://grass.itc.it/grass51/index.html">GRASS</a> GIS being released under the GPL and the potential of combining the newly "open-sourced" GIS with the open source MySQL database. A reader had commented that the open source <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/">PostgreSQL</a> database was more commonly used with GRASS.

June 17 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

This from reader Matt Bai, who responds to my observation that all the buildings in Times Square are coated with animated, lighted advertising signage: "I noticed the same thing when I was staying in Times Square recently. It's like a sci fi movie--everything is live action distraction. (I just coined that term, <br /> by the way--live action distraction. I want to be credited in your blog.)"<br /> <br /> Okay, Matt. There you go.

June 15 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

We knew about <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5NMBENMBBXMO2CRBAELCFEY?type=scienceNews&storyID=5408235">this</a> already - Reuters is reporting yet another United Nations report that says global warming and population growth are increasing vulnerability to floods. This time they say there'll be 1 billion people exposed to the threat by 2050.<br /> <br /> I didn't go back and re-read before posting, but if I remember right that's much the same as what the Pew Oceans Commission said about <a href="http://www.pewoceans.org/reports/water_pollution_sprawl.pdf">coastal sprawl</a>

June 14 - Anonymous

FEATURE

June 13 - Owen Courreges

BLOG POST

San Francisco - The current issue of <em>Science</em> has an interesting Policy Forum laying out some of the challenges of building in earthquake country (fulltext <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/304/5677/1604">here</a>; pdf <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/304/5677/1604">here</a>). The salient point:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>...basic data and analysis are lacking for how buildings and structures perform under the extreme loads produced by earthquakes. Some experts think structural damage prediction models are based largely on opinion. Application of laboratory data is difficult because of soil- structure interactions and difficulties simulating excitations at high frequencies. These limitations are increasingly important as the postearthquake performance goal for critical buildings moves toward immediate occupancy and functionality.</blockquote>

June 10 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Kevin Leeson, Special Projects Coordinator and Chris Alvarado, Associate Senior Planner, setup and run the <a href="http://planning.co.cuyahoga.oh.us/blog/">Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Weblog</a>. As far as I know, this is the first public-sector planning blog in existence.<br /> <br /> The purpose of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Weblog primarily is to act as a news gathering and dissemination resource for the Greater Cleveland and Cuyahoga County planning community, which includes 59 communities, cities, villages and townships.

June 9 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

<a href="http://www.visitorville.com/">VisitorVille</a> is a website log analysis program that uses an <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,63767,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1">graphical urban metaphor</a> to visualize website traffic flow.<br /> <img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//200406609-visitorville.jpg" alt="VisitorVille Screenshot" align="right" /><br /> <blockquote>"A company's entire Web presence is seen as an urban or suburban neighborhood, with each individual Web page presented as a building. The more visitors on a site, the taller the buildings, and the brighter the lights on each floor...each visitor is represented by a small avatar that, when clicked, presents a passport that offers several pieces of information about the user, such as her or his IP address, where that person came from and more. Avatars from dot-com domains wear a suit. Those from dot-edu domains dress as students."</blockquote>

June 9 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

The US Environmetal Protection Agency has launched their daily <a href="http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html">Ultra Violet Index</a> website, where you can search for your zip code's daily UV Index rating.<br /> <br /> Tomorrow's Los Angeles UV Index rating is 9: "Try to avoid the sun between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Otherwise, seek shade, cover up, wear a hat and sunglasses, and use sunscreen. " <br /> <br /> The UV Index is computed using forecasted ozone levels, a computer model that relates ozone levels to UV incidence (incoming radiation level) on the ground, forecasted cloud amounts, and the elevation of the forecast cities.

June 8 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

The <a href="http://www.grants.gov/">Grants.gov</a> initiative is seen as a model e-government project but it has had <br /> <a href="http://www.gcn.com/23_13/news/26113-1.html">trouble attracting users</a> according to an article in Government Computer News. The website enables citizens to apply for grants online. <br /> <br /> <img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//20040608-grantsgov_01.gif" alt="Grants.gov Logo" align="right" width="200" height="75" /><br /> <blockquote>"[The Office of Management and Budget] officials are working to define utilization -- how e-government projects are used after they’ve been fully implemented -- and plan how the projects will reach the marks they set. Project managers must decide who their customers are and how they’ll measure use of the service...<br /> <br /> [Officials] have identified several obstacles to finding users: informing them about the portal, making it easy for them to use and getting other agencies to participate....<br /> </blockquote>

June 8 - Abhijeet Chavan

FEATURE

June 7 - Don Morehouse, Amy Ansong, Jeffrey Johnston

BLOG POST

New York - An interesting observation about the impending demolition of Hollywood landmark restaurant Perino's here courtesy of the "LA Cowboy" blog.<br /> <br /> So, why <em>don't</em> they just <a href="http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/2004/06/last-of-perinos.html">move it</a>?

June 6 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

New York - I'm in Manhattan, at a hotel in Times Square. It's been more than a year since I was here. And I'm struck by the increase in active signage, even here, the heart of inventive building-side ads. Just about every building here in Times Square is coated with multicolored, programmable screens. Some of them just do text; others are nearly as good as a television.<br /> <br /> So just an observation, but as flat-screen technology gets better, as LEDs get brighter, we're going to see a lot more TV-like screens replacing static billboards.

June 6 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

San Francisco - We've got a newish mayor here in SF, Gavin Newsom, who worried some of the town's liberal voting block when he beat a fellow county supervisor, Matt Gonzalez, to win the top spot. Gonzalez was a Green, way left; Newsom was perceived to be allied with the city's establishment, specifically the politically efficient machine built by former mayor Willie Brown (term-limited out) and a group always referred to in the press as "downtown developers." As far as I can tell, these are the people who want to build tall buildings.

June 2 - Anonymous

FEATURE

While growth is inevitable, the overcrowding and overuse of transportation is not. Using technology in conjunction with politics, private transportation will be more efficient using centralized computing to clear current roadways.

May 31 - Oded Roth

BLOG POST

<p>Reason magazine did a very provocative this month &#150; for each of their 40,000 subscribers they printed a customized cover including an aerial photo of their house. The magazine headline started with the homeowner's name in big orange letters followed by the subtitle &quot;They Know Where Your Are!&quot; Click <a href="http://www.placematters.us/Graphics/reason.jpg" target="_blank">here</a> to see the cover of the issue mailed to my neighbor &#150; my house is 2 houses to the right. <br><br /> <br><br /> On the inside cover, the Editor's Note includes several local facts embedded into the text &quot;&#133;as a telecommuter I don't envy your area's average commute of 27.

May 28 - Ken Snyder

BLOG POST

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Navstar.jpg"><img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//20040526-gps.jpg" alt="NAVSTAR GPS Satellite [Source: Wikipedia]" title="NAVSTAR GPS Satellite [Source: Wikipedia]" border="0" align="right" /></a><br /> <br /> This <a href="http://www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/~jdl/gnss2004.pdf">keynote speech</a> [PDF, 28 kb] by David Last of the University of Wales, UK provides an overview of the U.S. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS">Global Postioning System</a> (GPS) and the European <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_system">Galileo Positioning System</a>

May 25 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

Pew Internet & American Life Project<br /> <br /> A new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, "<a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=127">How Americans Get in Touch With Government</a>", shows that 97 million adult Americans, or 77% of Internet users, took advantage of e-gov in 2003, whether that meant going to government Web sites or emailing government officials. This represented a growth of 50% from 2002. At the same time, citizens who contact government said they are more likely to turn to traditional means - either the telephone or in-person visits - rather than the Web or email to deal with government.

May 25 - Chris Steins