An App That Rewards You for Riding a Bike
Biko rewards cyclists with free stuff just for riding their bike! Rewards include small things like coffee to very expensive consumer items. The idea of rewarding cyclist for not killing…
technology
New bank Account Morally Monitors Your Purchases
money Aspiration financial firm is a B-corporatoin that wants to help people “vote with their wallets”. It’s incredibly hard for individuals to stay up to date on the damage that…
Treepedia Lets Cities See Where Trees are Needed
Treepedia is a new tool from MIT that uses Google street view to asses what the coverage of trees are in specific areas. It lets you know what your neighbourhood…
WiFi hysteria again
Every so often, old crackpot ideas, hoaxes, cons and plainly silly pseudoscience resurface online under the guise of Trump-like alternate fact. Scary stories about chemicals in your food, fake health…
Be Safe Online
The American government recently repealed laws set to protect your privacy online, clearly the government doesn’t care about private communication. This impacts people around the world because a lot of…
Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Heather Whiteside discusses how the privatization schemes being toyed with at all levels of government represent nothing more than reckless gambling with…
It’s Fine to not Check Your Email
Stop compulsively checking your email. Frequent checking of one’s inbox will lead to stress for a few reasons so it’s best to schedule your email checking to every couple of…
What It’s Like to Use the Internet in Cuba
The internet is a great resource for connecting people to people and connecting people to services and new ideas. Cuba, like other developing nations, has had a hard time connecting…
Capturing Animals in 3D for the Future
We are witnessing one of the largest extinction events in history because people deny that climate change is happening. Regardless of the deniers and the death of entire species we…
The Future of USDS: Trump, civic tech and the lesson of GDS
Across Washington, the country, and the world, the assumptions people have about various programs, policies and roles have been radically altered in the last 12 hours with the victory of…
Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking
Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names. The post Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web…
Simulations Help Predict How People Panic
Sadly there are still incidents of death that are a result of people panicking while evacuating spaces. For decades engineers have looked into ways to make buildings easy to evacuate…
Improvising a Digital Curriculum at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Since arriving as a Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to integrate digital into the curriculum. I have a course…
Solar Sales Soaring Sixfold
Bloomberg is reporting that they anticipate a sixfold increase in star capacity thanks to the efficiency of a having a naturally-occuring ball of fire in our solar system. The sun…
Canada’s Draft Open Government Plan — The Promise and Problems Reviewed
Backdrop On Friday the Canadian Government released its draft national action plan. Although not mentioned overtly in the document, these plans are mandated by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), in…
How the Media Should have Responded to Peter Thiel
Much ink has been spilled about Peter Thiel’s funding of various cases against Gawker. However, the discussion of whether he should or shouldn’t mostly miss the point. Nor do the…
Email, Productivity, And How You Feel
Dealing with an endless stream of emails is challenge in any office environment – even just socially it can be rather taxing. The solution to email always seems to be…
The Empire Strikes Back: How the death of GDS puts all government innovators at risk
The UK Government Digital Service(GDS) is dead. I’m sure it will continue to exist in some form, but from what I’ve read it appears to have been gutted of its…