CouchDB
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5 Minute REST API
Inspired by one of Waldo Jaquith’s recent projects to create an easy solution for converting data into a REST API, I wanted to try doing the same thing with a bit of a different approach. Below is a quick screencast demonstrating how to take a CSV file and convert it into a powerful, flexible REST… Continue reading
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Speech Recognition for Open311
Really excited about a new project I started recently to enable phone-based speech recognition for 311 service requests. Here is a screen cast demonstrating the solution. I write about it in detail on the Tropo blog. Head on over the get the details, or check out the code for this solution (still a work in… Continue reading
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“Phind It For Me” Live in Philly
Really excited to launch a new OpenGov project in Philadelphia – Phind It For Me. The service is built on PHLAPI and the point data sets it houses. As such, one could understand why I’d be interested in enhancing the data sets currently in PHLAPI. I’m really excited about this project – source code available… Continue reading
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Building an Open311 Application with Node.js and CouchDB
Lots of work is being done to finalize the next version of the Open311 API spec (officially referred to as GeoReport V2). Almost a year ago I launched TweetMy311 – a service that lets people report non-emergency service requests using a smart phone and Twitter. Since then, a lot has changed – not only with… Continue reading
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Experiments in Open Data: Baltimore Edition
A lot of my open gov energy of late has been focused on replicating a technique pioneered by Max Ogden (creator of PDXAPI) to convert geographic information in shapefile format into an easy to use format for developers. Specifically, Max has pioneered a technique for converting shapefiles into documents in an instance of GeoCouch (the… Continue reading
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Tapping into Open Government
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of hanging out with a bunch of fellow geeks for the better part of a day in Philly at Neomind Labs to work on an open government / open data project as part of the Open Data Hackathon. Though most of us had just met, we were able… Continue reading
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Building an Open311 Application
Earlier this year, I had an idea to build a Twitter application that would allow a citizen to start a 311 service request with their city. At the time, there was no way to build such an application as no municipality had yet adopted a 311 API that would support it (although the District of… Continue reading
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NoSQL Telephony with Tropo and CouchDB
In the last two posts, I’ve provided a basic overview of how to create cloud telephony applications using the Tropo platform and CouchDB. In the first post of this series, I walked through a quick install of CouchDB and provided information on getting a Tropo account set up. In the second post, we created a… Continue reading
About Me
I am the former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. I also served as Director of Government Relations at Code for America, and as Director of the State of Delaware’s Government Information Center. For about six years, I served in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), and helped pioneer their work with state and local governments. I also led platform evangelism efforts for TTS’ cloud platform, which supports over 30 critical federal agency systems.
Civic Innovations 