Year: 2012
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The Values President
Tomorrow I am going to go to the Club Lucky restaurant in Chicago, Illinois and vote for Barack Obama to retain his position as President of the United States. There are lots of reasons why, including all the normal policy agreements that a big-city Democrat would have with a solid Democratic President from the same…
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The Uneven Distribution of Efficiencies
There is a section of this story in the NYT today (A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Shift) that struck me another example of how the in-fluidity of data has negative affects on the economy: Technology is speeding this transformation. In the past, part-timers might work the same schedule of four- or five-hour shifts…
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On the Use of Private Data to Improve Lives (Five Data Sources You Can Use Now to Make a New Business)
I have long been been a proponent of open government data, and I’ve made a lot of products that use it. I’ve helped a number of cities, including my own, in publishing data and coming up with good policies. Over the last couple years, however, I’ve turned my attention to the vast troves of private data that…
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Hidden Personal Data and the Passionate Stories Within
Lately I’ve been collecting and publishing data about myself from disparate places. For instance, the CTA allows you to download the last 90 days of your travel history– here’s a block of mine. I’m working on collecting the last 5 years of every item each of my children has purchased for lunch at school. By…
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Next Door: Living Social and Hooters, Chinatown DC
The density of cities is a wonderful thing.