commuting

With all the green washing going on in this city, I find a tad absurd that there are guarded bike parking in most buildings, hotels, malls, etc but only for employees! Not really the right approach to spread biking as a commuting tool across Shanghai. What do you think?

Just thought if you're about to fly someplace from moscow it would be handy to have a place on the net to post
i)which airport youre departing from,
ii)at what time you're planning to arrive to the airport, and
iii)which tube station you're starting from
so that people could carpool and spare themselves expensive taxi service.

this is a sample of how it was done in the context of commuting to work: http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/commute_services/carpool_work.htm

Ok, so on 9th March, Transport Minister Stephen Joyce outlined New Zealand's infrastructure's current and future needs over the coming 20 years. Don't know about you, but I'm not prepared to wait for the creation of government-driven projects that try to solve questions that open technology can already answer.

How about approaching something simple for a starting point. Is there any way we can make sense of the jumbled mess of government websites - help communicate Wellington's services and culture in a joined-up way, so that people can actually get value from them?

Hey all -

You may have seen on the main thread that the DIYtraffic Bot is up and running in beta and we've got it tracking traffic right here in Chicago!

There are a couple ways you can interact with it:
1) follow traffic_chicago on Twitter to receive real-time updates (to your mobile phone, if you wish)
2) send a reply to @traffic_chicago to post your own traffic info if you see an accident or jam (no texting and driving, 'natch)
3) send the account a direct message with the name of a street to find out if there have been any recent traffic reports containing that street name (note, if you follow traffic_chicago, it will take about 30m for it to follow you back so you can send DMs to it).

Let me know if you have any problems / questions / comments or suggestions!

Dan

Transit Television Network, a subsidiary of Torstar (owner of Canada's biggest daily newspaper), has filed for bakruptcy.

In Milwaukee and other cities where it set up on buses, TTV seems universally loathed for reasons mentioned by this LA blogger: http://metroriderla.com/2006/12/03/transit-tv-how-we-hate-thee/

Worst of all, TTV has been an infection in public space. As a local rider puts it, TTV content screams one message over and over: "You are a Bus Rider; You are a Loser. This xxxxxx will save you from your misery. $19.95 and operators are standing by." Or a free PC by giving up your phone number and checking account number. Or the scams that came to us with the SAME actor, different names for the scams, but just call 800 xxx xxxx and your life will be turned around -- $500,000 from your home in one month. No one in their right minds would call such a number but that shouting sent a clear coherent message: You Are A Loser. And that message has pervaded bus service for the last decade.

My question: is there any way the existing hardware might be repurposed by creative groups to have a more publicly edifying message?

Hey all,

The possibilities of this forum are practically limitless - so let's start exploring them! While we haven't had a physical meet up (yet) this space can be a starting point for Twin Cities specific DIY ideas. Please, respond to this thread with

-what the ideal DIY TC would look like

-urgent (TC specific) issues you want to tackle with DIY tech

-next steps in addressing those issues

Also: how can we spread the news about this project? Like any forum, it depends on a quantity of quality contributors - spread the word!

I want to build an application that makes it ultra-easy for people to find or share rides with others, one that works and that people will use.

It should be an app that is specific to a particular location, but that can be adopted in cities everywhere with a few tweaks.

I think this is pretty feasible to build. Slightly challenging, but definitely doable.

I will pay for any costs incurred in the building and hosting of this app. Unless of course some charitable organization wants to donate resources. (If you are an organization that would like to do this, please get in touch).

I will post more details on the app, as I see it, in a separate post within this thread.

What is the most amazing DIYcity idea you've got? The thing you've been thinking about building for years, or something just off the top of your head right now. Let's have it.

The first response to DIYcity Challenge #1 was TrafficTweet, a Twitter bot that allows people in NYC to tweet updates to each other about traffic conditions. See DIYcity post about it here: http://diycity.org/challenge-response/first-response-diycity-challenge-1...

Good idea - what are some ways this could be made more useful to people?

What would keep you from using it?

It somehow feels like a new world out there today, so it's fitting DIYcity has its first user-submitted app! Traffictweet, created by Andy Weissman, is a twitter bot that lets people broadcast current traffic conditions to others listening in. Subscribe to it, broadcast messages about traffic, and receive messages sent by others.

Nice.

The app is pretty general of course. It would be useful to have different twitter feeds set up for different cities, for starters, and then you could segment it further several different ways to minimize noise to users. Still, this is a great first step for trying out and moving forward with. Kudos to Andy.

I just subscribed to the feed and am going to start playing around with it. If you're interested, you should do the same.

Or else take the idea one step further and build something better.