Social Media as a Sensor – Leveraging Crowdsourced Data for Early Warning and Response

Originally posted at www.thehomelandsecurityblog.com 2011 January 24 By Sara Estes CohenCo-authored by Bill Hyjek A recent story published on Wired.com discussed the findings of group of researchers at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing who developed a method for predicting changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average through the analysis of Twitter updates.Read… Read more »

Bus Meister – a tool for improving participation in public transport planning

I have just finished the beta version of a game designed to help citizens understand public transport priority. The game is linked to a wiki that provides detailed information about measures to improve public transport. Once we are happy with the game we will place it on facebook and add social networking features so thatRead… Read more »

The Science of Green: Bioprospecting

We’ve often heard that nature holds the solutions to many things. From various diseases to energy constraints, scientists have searched from the desert to the rain forest for nature’s solutions to today’s problems. It should come as little surprise, then, to find that DOE researchers have become, in their own words, “bioprospectors.” These scientists areRead… Read more »

Smartphone Payments = Future Changes to Micropurchase Payments?

Update: Half of the post was cut off for an unknown reason. That has been fixed and the entire post is present. Fun Stats in a Chart An interesting chart was shown yesterday morning on CNNMoney.com. (The link is at the bottom so you’ll keep reading.) An chart yesterday shown on CNNMoney.com (the link isRead… Read more »

Building an innovation culture

One of the best blogs I read regularly on innovation is 100% Open. The latest post there is a pretty interesting one on building an innovation culture. The tips are: Focus on fostering a viral innovation culture one person/team at a time Build innovation habits Institutionalise what innovation looks like Give mavericks & their networksRead… Read more »

The Federal Coach: Keeping Employees During the Federal Ice Age

Federal managers are facing what some have called the “ice age,” the era of pay and hiring freezes that could have a significant effect on the government workforce. Like many federal managers, I was in Washington during the last “ice age” and its affects were detrimental. Another hiring freeze would likely leave critical positions unfilled,Read… Read more »

Minnesota to accelerate permitting, environmental review

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has signed an Executive Order that requires the Commissioners of the Department of Natural Resources and the Pollution Control Agency to “move at the speed of commerce,” by accelerating and simplifying their environmental review and permitting processes. The Governor claims that the changes are needed in order to make the stateRead… Read more »

Gov 2.0 Community – Rate Obama’s SOTU Live on Your iPhone

Gov 2.0 Radio is inviting its community to join in rating President Obama’s State of the Union address live on Tuesday night. You’ll be able to give your feedback second by second on your iPhone – just follow the instructions here. By participating in the live mobile polling, you’ll be building a custom profile ofRead… Read more »

Mind the (data) gap!

In the beginning, there was just data. It sat there, on remote servers, locked away behind firewalls and closed doors. No one gave it much thought, really, everyone sitting in their little silos, reinventing the wheel every time they needed to write a query or build a visualisation. Then there was the word. And theRead… Read more »