Dirty Energy Lobby Wins In EU – Shale Gas Now Considered “Green Energy”
lobbyist-payoff1.jpg In a headline that would appear to be ripped off the pages of The Onion, The Guardian UK this week reported “Gas rebranded as green energy by EU.” After…
technology
Lessons from Michigan’s “Innovation Fund” for Government Software
So it was with great interest that several weeks ago a reader emailed me this news article coming out of Michigan. Turns out the state recently approved a $2.5 million…
We Must Force the Politicians to Go Post-Carbon
We need to leave the tarsands oil in the ground. We need an increasing carbon tax. We need to stop subsidizing carbon energy producers. We need public money invested in…
New coins costing Canadians a lot of cash…
Last month, the Royal Canadian Mint put into circulation a new generation of loonies and toonies. The Royal Canadian Mint, however, did not give Canadian cities official notice of when…
Public Policy: The Big Opportunity For Health Record Data
A few weeks ago Colin Hansen – a politician in the governing party in British Columbia (BC) – penned an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun entitled Unlocking our data to…
Shaw Cable’s Dismissive, Dodging Customer Service
Shaw, the Corporation If you are a lower mainland Shaw Cable customer you may have noticed a quite vague notification of a $5 bill increase coming in June. It is…
Canada Post’s War on the 21st Century, Innovation & Productivity
The other week Canada Post announced it was suing Geocoder.ca – an alternative provider of postal code data. It’s a depressing statement on the status of the digital economy in…
ARM and the return of the hardware hacker
Technology innovation has in a sense returned to the good old days where hardware and software had far less of a division between them. When Apple and Microsoft initially launched…
Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government: A Review
The other day the Canadian Government published its Action Plan on Open Government, a high level document that both lays out the Government’s goals on this file as well as…
Beautiful Maps – Google Maps in Water Colours
You know, really never know what the web is going to throw at you next. The great people over at Stamen Design (if you’ve never heard of Stamen you are…
Using BHAG’s to Change Organziations: A Management, Open Data & Government Mashup
I’m a big believer in the ancillary benefits of a single big goal. Set a goal that has one clear objective, but as a result a bunch of other things…
Next Generation Open Data: Personal Data Access
This post matters. If you’re involved in the healthcare sector or a energy utility, please read. Background This Monday I had the pleasure of being in Mexico City for the…
When Industries Get Disrupted: Toronto Real Estate Boards Sad Campaign
As some of my readers know I’ve been engaged by the real estate industry at various points over the last year to share thoughts about how they might be impacted…
lawTechCamp 2012 is Looking for Students
Are you interested in the intersection between law and technology? Here’s a message from the sponsors: After the great success we had last year with lawTechCamp,we are back again this…
Why Everyone Should Read Cat’s Cradle
“Now I will destroy the whole world.” – What Bokonists say when they commit suicide, Cat’s Cradle, Chapter 106 You’d think a story about the end of the world –…
Want to Find Government Innovation? US Military is often leading the way.
When it comes to see what trends will impact government in 20-30 years I’m a big fan of watching the US military. They may do lot of things wrong but,…
Access to Information, Open Data and the Problem with Convergence
In response to my post yesterday one reader sent me a very thoughtful commentary that included this line at the end: “Rather than compare FOI legislation and Open Gov Data…
The achingly slow pace of iOS software development
The big news in the tech world yesterday was the launch of Apple’s latest iteration of the iPad. For those of us suffering the quintessential first world problem of being…
Calculating the Value of Canada’s Open Data Portal: A Mini-Case Study
Okay, let’s geek out on some open data portal stats from data.gc.ca. I’ve got three parts to this review: First, an assessment on how to assess the value of data.gc.ca.…
Control Your Content: Why SurveyMonkey Should Add a “Download Your Answers” Button
Let me start by saying, I really like SurveyMonkey. By this I mean, I like SurveyMonkey specifically, but I also like online survey’s in general. They are easy to ignore…