Sounds of spring

early peepers, late woods
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Yesterday evening, i did some driving around on small roads north of Georgetown while daughter #2 was at her dance class. I found myself on a winding road through a very wet woodland and listening to many many peeping frogs.

It's one way we know that springs is on the way.

Here's Something I Think You Should Do

Take a moment and go to the FCC's broadband web site and use their broadband testing widget. That will help them build a map of broadband access around the country.

A part of the overall stimulus package is funding to improve Americans' access to the internet via broadband -- to ensure access to rich content, audio, video, and really fast data transfer. To spend that money wisely, the feds need to have a clear picture of where there is strong broadband and where there is not. They need a detailed map of broadband access. They need geospatial data about it.

Think for a moment about the pissing match between ATT and Verizon in those annoying cell-phone commercials. It comes down to dueling versions of maps of  "3G" access. Which one is right? Can we really take ATT's word, or Verizon's word? Not really.

That's why we need independent information on what is the true broadband picture. Where is wired access? Where is wireless?

Many of the states (including Delaware, over at DTI) are working on broadband mapping using federal grants to gather data from providers and work with the public. In support of this, the FCC has created, and this week released, a widget that combines collection of "where" information (the geospatial part) with existing broadband speed testers (the data part).

I heard an announcement of the new widget at this week's mid-year conference of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), in Annapolis. The new Geospatial Information Officer (GIO) at the FCC is the former GIS coordinator of California, Mike Byrne, long a respected NGSIC member. He announced plans for the widget on Monday and sent word on Thursday that it was live.

I've written different versions of this post on the NSGIC blog and on my State of Delaware GIS coordination blog. But this widget isn't just meant for GIS geeks, it's meant for all of us.

So take a minute or two and test your speed. Help the feds use actual data to spend our money wisely.

Stickers, Stickers, Everywhere

You may have noticed a small red sticker has started turning up in my flickr photo stream lately. You may be wondering, "why?"

Well, here's why.

My friend Learon Dalby works in the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO). They developed a logo for their office a few years ago and recently had it printed onto stickers that they have started handing out to friends and fans and folks in general.

The logo, and the sticker, of course, include the motto "Putting Arkansas on the Map!" That led Learon to ask whether it might be possible to get Arkansas on the map in some other states too.

Discussion ensued which resulted in my firm stance AGIO could get pictures of the logo taken in all 50 states using various social media outlets and personal connections. I am also hoping to get a few from the territories.

So Learon has been handing out stickers to friends in other states and we are dutifully posing them with landmarks in our states and sharing the photos, and locations, back with Learon.

Expect them to appear on a map sometime soon. We're GIS geeks, this is what we do.

Going... Going...

It's been a month since the Blizzards of 2010 in southern Delaware. Starting on February 5, we had two rounds of heavy snow.

The storms left us shoveling out driveways and piling the snow along the sides.

I piled most of our driveway's snow on the side of the driveway that is usually downwind in our neighborhood. My theory was that that would reduce drifting. It mostly worked. It also meant that we had a large long ridge of snow down one side of the driveway.

It stuck around for a while. This shot is from March 4. Even after a warm-up and lots of rain, there was still a small snow bank.

By this morning (March 6) the end was in sight.

Finally, this afternoon, we saw the very last of the snowbank.

I like snow, but I'm glad to see the last of it for this year. I hope.

OK Go? Go, OK?

This has been all over the web today. It's really very cool. So I thought I'd post it too! OK Go, who did such a cool dance on treadmills a while back, have now topped themselves.

Have We Lost Wordle?

If you've read my efforts here, or on the DGDC News blog, or on the NSGIC News blog, you'll know that I am a fan of Wordle, a lovely little web tool that is used to create word clouds from blocks of text. This morning, I read on TechCrunch that Wordle has run into trademark trouble. Someone already owns the name "wordle" and they want it back.

I use Wordle to creat graphics that illustrate points I'm trying to make. For example, here is a word cloud I made from the abstracts for presentations planned at the 2010 Delaware GIS Conference:

I used this in a series of posts introducing the various presentations. I've also used Wordle-generated word clouds in presentations, in e-mails, and as a representation of my work duties that is posted on my office door.

So, the thought of losing this tool makes me sad. The developer has posted a request for pro-bono legal advice. That's all there is at wordle.net just now. As far as I know, that site was never a money-making proposition.

I hope an accord with the trademark-owner can be reached. Or, at least, that the-site-formerly-known-as-Wordle can come back under a new name.

Update 1: Phil Bradley's comment points to his own post on this (Wordle Closed - alternatives) which includes a list of other word-cloud tools. It's very helpful.

Update 2:  Richard James has let me know that Wordle is back, at least for now. And the TechCrunch post has been updated with a link to a twitter campaign to save wordle.

Lessons in Civics and Satire from Jon and John

Jon Stewart and John Oliver performed a perfect satire of the current Congressional Health Care debate on The Daily Show last night.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bipartisan Health Care Reform Summit 2010 - Government Unity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Vancouverage 2010

Another Twitter Conjunction

Every once in a while things line up unexpectedly in my twitter stream. This evening, for example:

Twitterer Liz Purcell was celebrating her joy in watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a great web-series by Josh Wheedon and starring Neil Patrick Harris. At almost the same time, Harris, who tweets as ActuallyNPH was wondering why he was watching Curling.

That's Cory Groll sandwiched in between. His tweet was a bit more serious.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Governor Markell

Our Governor here in Delaware, Jack Markell, has just launched his blog. He used the occasion of our recent doubled blizzard and the response and reaction from people within state government.

Last week, he had sent all state employees an e-mail thanking us for our work during the storm (no credit to me, the emergency personnel and the snow-plow folks are my heroes) and asking us for our stories of survival and assistance from or for our neighbors. He sent a follow-up today saying that he'd heard many stories that inspired him. he gave a few samples and then announced his blog.

As he explains in the first posting on his blog, much of what he heard back was about the sung and un-sung heroes among the state workforce.

For that reason, I’m launching my blog today and dedicating it to our very hardworking employees across Delaware.  I’ll be sharing stories from citizens and colleagues about acts of bravery, as well as important issues that affect us all.

I think this is a great thing. The Governor already has a twitter account (@governormarkell) and is perfectly up-front with the fact that he splits the posting duties with a few members of his staff; tweets that end with *B are from Brian Selander and those that end with *F are from Felicia Pullam. Both Brian and Felicia, by the way, maintain their own very interesting and useful twitter accounts.

I will assume that posts on this new blog are probably a team effort as well. That doesn't mean they are any less the thoughts of Governor Markell; it is, after all, his blog. And knowing him just a little, as I am happy to say that I do, I would not be at all surprised if he did a lot of the writing himself.

In any case, this is another source of information from our Governor. That is a good thing.

"BBS" Means What, Now?

There's a note on CrunchGear today that takes me back to my earliest web work. Yesterday, apparently, was the birthday of the first-ever public "BBS," which stood for "Bulletin Board System."

A BBS was a dial-in, text-based computer bulletin board; not quite "the web" as we know it now, but a start. That first one started in 1978!

I was not involved in BBS work that far back, but I did run a BBS for Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control back in the early 1990s when I was a Community Relations Officer.

Our intent was simple -- we wanted to provide a place for the regulated community to access the latest versions of the state's environmental regulations. That meant translating all of the regulations into text files -- ascii text files with no formatting.

Of course, many of the regulations in those days dated back to before the widespread use of word-processing systems. In some cases, we were scanning and translating old, several-times copied typescript.

And we were struggling to create a usable system that the few very computerized engineering firms could use. I think we succeeded.

Later in the 1990s, I was working for the Economic Development Office and got to set up a series of World Wide Web pages to present census and other data to small business and other data users. I was using very rudimentary HTML coding and every section of the site was a new design challenge.

Things have changed a lot. Today, almost all state agency web sites use a "common look and feel" web page design put together by the government Information Center. We use twitter and RSS feeds and, in some cases blogging software and other tools.

But if you trace back from today's gov 2.0 web sites, you find simple, text-based BBS systems that were accessed over phone lines using modems that beeped, and booped, and transferred data via some strange wash of white noise.