I hate carrying legal pads or laptops at conferences, but I need to take notes if I want to remember anything anyone says. The perfect solution? I take notes with Evernote on my mobile device, which I can access on my desktop at work, my laptop at home, and on both my phones wherever IRead… Read more »
On June 17, Governor Rick Perry signed Senate Bill 701 into law, which requires each state agency to post high-value data sets online. This was a great victory for transparency and open government, putting into statute the requirement for all state agencies to post “raw data in open standard format that allows the public toRead… Read more »
By now, most people are familiar with Angry Birds, the simple trajectory-based mobile game about birds that can’t fly crashing into green pigs with mustaches and helmets. This game is so incredibly popular that it made the Guinness World Records for being the most downloaded paid app in most countries across the globe. There wereRead… Read more »
On May 2, Government Technology published a great article called Apps Contest Winners Need Better Government Data to Sustain Innovative Services. It was a very well-written article about the challenges of sustaining the make-data-available-for- private-sector-innovators model. By now, many of us are aware of events like Apps for Democracy, an app developing contest in WashingtonRead… Read more »
A few weeks ago, Twitter redesigned its homepage, going from to One of the biggest elements they removed was Trending Topics. This was a feature that was front and center in Twitter’s second redesign, showing what was popular by the minute, day or week. Then in the third redesign, Trending Topics shrunk to a small,Read… Read more »
On March 24, Facebook rolled out the Questions feature to all its users. It’s a new way to ask and get answers from your friends or fans on Facebook. For government, this could be a great opportunity to get direct feedback for Product development How can we improve our current website? How difficult was itRead… Read more »
In the wake of the recent disasters in Japan, many organizations used Twitter to raise donations for the relief effort overseas. However, Microsoft’s Bing pledged $100,000 and received a lot of criticism for their generous pledge. On March 12, Bing tweeted “How can you #SupportJapan? For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quakeRead… Read more »
SxSW Interactive, one of the best technology conferences you can attend, kicks off today in sunny Austin, Texas. Unfortunately, even though I’m only one mile away, won’t be attending this year. But that doesn’t mean I can’t keep up with what’s going on in my favorite sessions. At 2:00PM CST, Tim O’Reilly, the founder ofRead… Read more »
This week, location based service Foursquare announced its new features to enhance the social check-in experience. They also reiterated their vision to go beyond “a game built on check-ins” into “making cities easier to use.” Foursquare isn’t just trying to find out whether you’re at the coffee shop or a night club; they’re gaining insightRead… Read more »
More and more government agencies are jumping on the social media bandwagon, but not all are starting with a social media policy. Some simply go forth and facebook, not realizing the ramifications of generating official information on a third party website. Are social media policies really needed? Yes. I’d like to use an analogy toRead… Read more »