Create a Hyperlocal News Ecosystem to Serve the Community

Building Community

Yesterday, Patch (the hyper local news publisher funded by America Online) launched a Westwood, Massachusetts site–the 11th town so far in Massachusetts. I met the editor and am impressed that they are making an effort to cover the news in this town of 15,000–potentially filling the void left when the Daily News Transcript stopped being [...]

Read the full article →

Massachusetts Open Meeting Law Changes This Week

Building Community

Significant changes to Massachusetts Open Meeting law take effect on July 1, 2010. The new rules do not directly promote collaborative technologies–e.g. how a town might use a wiki to improve governance, for example, but some common sense clarifications do open the door to removing some anti-technology sentiment. And I think the documentation requirements will [...]

Read the full article →

Drupal for Smart People: Drupal Gardens

Technology How-To

Drupal is one of the most popular and free content management platforms used to build sophisticated web sites. A new service, Drupal Gardens, provices a hosted and simplified version of Drupal so you can start without the installation and configuration tech tasks that put this out of reach of most users. Drupal Gardens is not [...]

Read the full article →

Hybrid Electric Bikes for Fun, Green Commutes

Active Transportation

Electric bikes have been around for years but recent advances in battery technology and Bedford, Massachussets company Pietzo, may have finally made them practical for commuters seeking an environmentally-responsible alternative to gridlock. I test rode several today, and I encourage others to hop on one of these bikes and learn how it could change your [...]

Read the full article →

The Accidental Vegetarian

Creative Life

Meat is overrated. After several weeks since I ate meat as part of my diet, I’m not really missing it. So I guess I am coming out as a vegetarian. It’s no big deal. But it wasn’t something I decided, planned, or forced myself to do. It just happened. My family started thinking more critically [...]

Read the full article →

Access TV: Playing Out of the Box

Building Community

Westwood Community Access Television is using a simple, but powerful combination of old and new media technology to jumpstart their efforts to bring public access TV to Westwood, Massachusetts. While the administrative and technical details for taking control of local origination programming are still underway, we are using Ustream to livecast from our minimalist control [...]

Read the full article →

How to Copy Music from your iPod to your Mac

Technology How-To

Life was good when you had your iPod all synced up with your old computer. Then, you lost that computer somehow. You didn’t care because you had 8 GB of songs safely stored on the iPod, right? Then, you bought a MacBook and thought, “I’ll just plug the iPod in and sync it back to [...]

Read the full article →

Expensive Crosswalks Built to Last

Active Transportation

You might think painting a crosswalk is only slightly more complicated than putting a yellow line down the middle of the road. Take a look around at the faded and nearly invisible crosswalks in your community and you can begin to appreciate that it’s not that simple. I had the opportunity to watch a demonstration [...]

Read the full article →

Flashing Crosswalk Beacons Promote Safety

Active Transportation

For about $10,000, a community can install an eco-friendly system to make crosswalks safer for pedestrians and much more visible to drivers. A new type of lighting system, the Rapid Rectangular Flashing Beacon is proving even more effective because the flashing lights–more like police and emergency vehicle lighting–get the attention of motorists. As my town’s [...]

Read the full article →

Using Google Maps to Advocate for Pedestrian Improvements

Active Transportation

Google maps have helped our town’s Pedestrian and Bicycle advisory committee by allowing us to project a satellite or streetview image on the wall for discussion. Using screencast software, I recently incorporated this into a presentation for a grant application to fund enhancements at two crosswalks: I was looking for a simple way to share [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →