There’s a reason I bring up the Washington DOT every time I give a presentation about using social media in public works. They were early on the scene to realize how much social media could assist them in public relations, and they’ve done a great job figuring out how best to engage the public. AndRead… Read more »
Fleep recently summarized the promise she saw in the Second Life community, the change that transpired there over the last few years, and her decision to focus her involvement in a different virtual community or platform. (You can read her article here: Why Anyone Who Cares. . ..) And based on the comments she receivedRead… Read more »
Normally when we bid a construction project, we don’t address in the bid documents the payment of sales tax. We do, however, indicate that the contractor is required to follow all Federal, State, and Local laws. Because of this, I would assume that on most projects, a contractor would be paying any required sales taxRead… Read more »
Pegasus Global Holdings is planning to build a full-scale city somewhere in New Mexico “to test and evaluate technologies in conditions that most closely simulate real-world applications.” According to the project’s website, CITE-CITY, the company proposed building the model to overcome challenges related to access, long waits, and costs that they faced in carrying outRead… Read more »
Police have a fairly obvious presence in our lives – we see them at events, driving on the roads, and we count on them if we happen to be a victim of a crime. They are so familiar that many people probably think they have a good idea of exactly what the police do eachRead… Read more »
Have you ever had a question about something related to public works? Sewers, roads, water, garbage, engineering, GIS, general government, or anything else related to what we do? Well, we’re trying out a new service that would allow anyone to post or answer a question related to public works. Maybe you work in the fieldRead… Read more »
After launching a community planning effort in the virtual world of Second Life, I’ve begun to experience a few things I don’t think many of us in government would have thought possible. Like probably many of you working in government and planning, I’ve been amazed that so few people really get involved in a constructiveRead… Read more »
There’s been a lot of talk about the use of Kinect and robotics. Yes, people have figured out how to use Microsoft’s awesome gadget to manipulate robots. And Microsoft even has a Robotics website and development toolkits for this purpose. But so far, most of the demos I have seen focus on using robots toRead… Read more »
At work we’ve been focusing a lot on development of web maps. We have an ESRI ArcGIS Server so we’ve been trying out the JavaScript, Flex, and Silverlight options available. But we’ve also been exploring the mapping/GIS opportunities offered by Google. This week, I needed to create an embeddable map that I could easily generateRead… Read more »
This month, the community in Second Life celebrates its 9th birthday, otherwise known as SL9B. This seems to be the first year that the celebration is not sponsored or hosted by Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. Instead, this year, Linden Lab announced the theme of the birthday would be community and that theRead… Read more »