TroySchneider.com

Cool New Mapping at New America

Troy K. Schneider — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:11:51 +0000

We've been playing with TileMill at New America as we do more with mapping and data visualization. Much of this work has been spearheaded by the good folks at DevelopmentSeed, but this sample below is entirely home-grown. (We're learning!)

This map shows the 300+ participants in this weekend's Deliberative Poll in California. You can mouse over any point to learn a bit about the individual in question, as well as some basics about the part of California in which he or she lives. You can also zoom and a drag the map to zero in on a particular region.

If you'd like to embed this map on your own blog or website -- whether for the whole state or to zoom in on particular region -- you can customize and then grab the embed code here.

A Better Way to Map Arlington Cemetary

Troy K. Schneider — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:45:01 +0000

As Thursday’s congressional hearing and the Army’s own investigation have made clear, the dysfunctions at Arlington Cemetery go much deeper than the antiquated record-keeping. Yet that lack of a real tracking and mapping system clearly contributed to the errors detailed by Washington Post reporters -- and the fact that 11 years, 35 contracts and $5.5 million have failed to produce a usable database is appalling in its own right.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, technology projects are complicated, and government contracts have challenges all their own. But Arlington Cemetery -- with its 300,000 graves and few hundred acres -- is not *that* big of a data project. And there are countless current examples, using open-source tools and widely-used software, that show just how much can be done for a fraction of the funds wasted so far.

Take, for example, earthquake-ravaged Haiti -- a place most would agree faces resource and governance challenges that dwarf Arlington’s. Today, the definitive map of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas is on Open Street Map -- a free, global, volunteer-driven project that aims to provide “a free editable map of the whole world.” In the hours after the Jan. 12 quake, volunteers on the ground began updating and improving the maps to facilitate relief efforts -- giving aid workers a way to navigate the confusing and often-blocked streets. Then on Jan. 14, high-resolution satellite images of Haiti were released, and volunteers worldwide began “tracing” and annotating -- not only roads, but buildings, obstacles and even communities of displaced Haitians. Within days, virtually every corner of the region had been accurately mapped -- no contract required.

More recently, InterAction -- a D.C.-based non-profit that focuses on aid and development -- launched HaitiAidMap.org. This site inventories, at last count, 1,045 aid projects in Haiti involving 87 different organizations. This project did involve a contractor -- which billed all of $40,000, and took less than a month to deliver the final project.

HaitiAidMap.org, of course, started with much cleaner data than the cemetery, with its index cards and “hand-drawn maps on six-foot-wide sheets of paper,” can provide. But as the Open Street Map project has proven, in Haiti and elsewhere, amazing things are possible with GPS, satellite images, and careful note-taking.

The basic mapping of Arlington Cemetery, in fact, is already done in Open Street Map. One woman, contributing to the project in her spare time, has added cemetery roads, monuments, several sections and a handful of notable burial plots. And as part of Open Street Map, that data is freely available for the Army to use and extend as it pleases.

Surveying and cross-checking every single burial plot would take significantly more effort, of course, and a functioning records system for our most hallowed cemetery requires more than just accurate and attractive electronic maps. But surely we can get more for our time and money than cemetery officials have managed over the past decade.

So next Memorial Day, when soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry place flags on the graves of service members (a ritual that, according to the Arlington National Cemetery website, takes roughly three hours), let’s equip them with some GPS units and make a day of it. Or better yet, let’s round up volunteers and do it now. The heroes buried at Arlington deserve a system that works -- and so do the American taxpayers.

Hitting the Reset Button

Troy K. Schneider — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:20:00 +0000

OK, this is ridiculous. In the interim since my last post, I could have had a baby -- except, y'know, for that whole being-male thing.

So this post is to officially shame myself into re-thinking and re-tooling the site. Either start posting again, or change things around to pull in my updates from elsewhere. Or maybe both.

Talking Feed-in Tariffs on Etopia News Now

Troy K. Schneider — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:07:52 +0000

I did a quick interview yesterday with Etopia News Now on feed-in tariffs and the event New America is convening Friday in partnership with the Washington Monthly:

It's an interesting topic -- but if you really want to understand the idea and its potential, read Mariah Blake's Washington Monthly article.

The Power of Open Source - In Moving Pictures, No Less!

Troy K. Schneider — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:28:39 +0000

Quite possibly the coolest visualization ever* -- showing edits to the OpenStreetMap project during 2008.

Click here for details on the project itself. H/T to Eric & Jeff for the link.

OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

* I was going to say "the coolest visualization of open source ever," but a) that may not be a very high bar, and b) that sounds ridiculously geeky, even for me....

How to Trash Your Brand in Five Easy Steps

Troy K. Schneider — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:37:42 +0000

1. Market a line of dog products that ostensibly "feature the newest, toughest, and lightest materials to help keep your dogs (sic) beds and accessories lasting for years," and use the tag line, "Just try to chew through this."

2. Sell products that, in actuality, are remarkably easy for dogs to shred.

3. Send a marketing email to past customers, and leave everyone's email addresses visible in the To: field.

4. Sit back as said customers launch a reply-all flamefest comparing just how quickly their "virtually indestructible" purchases were destroyed by their dogs -- and complaining that this firm just published their email address to countless strangers.

5. Wait for reports of this boneheaded marketing move and vocally unhappy customers to climb toward the top of Google searches for "K-9 Ballistics," "chew-proof dog beds," etc., and watch online sales shrivel.

For the record, my dog chewed a hole in her K-9 Ballistics bed the very first day, and destroyed it entirely within two weeks. But this email annoyed me far more than our indestructibledisposable pet purchase. Any shop that treats its customer data (and satisfaction) with so little care deserves every brickbat it gets.

YouTube Embeds - Invasion of the Search Boxes

Troy K. Schneider — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:21:15 +0000

The New America Foundation, like half the sites on the web, makes extensive use of embedded YouTube videos. We long ago made the decision to use YouTube as our de facto video hosting service -- both for the added exposure it offers to New America events, and for the simple reason that the cost of storing and streaming our hundreds of hours of video was more than the organization could afford.*

This evening, though, I hopped over to NewAmerica.net and was greeted with the unpleasant surpise of YouTube search boxes plastered atop every one of our embedded videos. Apparently this "feature" was unveiled last month, but must have been rolled out gradually -- because at 6pm, our homepage looked like this:

and at 11pm it looked like this:

Such is life when you're relying on free web services and third-party APIs, but it's definitely not the look we're looking for. And the effect was even worse on our event pages, where the video search box appeared almost directly below our site search box -- making things confusing as well as clunky.

Luckily, Google is pretty good about making this stuff optional -- it'd be nice if such "improvements" were opt-in rather than opt-out, but it's an easy fix.

All that's required is the addition of &showsearch=0 to the end of the URL in the embed code. So instead of:

...embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cPWJ-hdz2f8"...

it's

...embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cPWJ-hdz2f8&showsearch=0"...

There are lots of other tweaks one can make to the look and feel of embedded videos. But if you're suddenly faced with uninvited search boxes, the code change above is a good place to start.

* * *

* The economics have actually changed quite a bit since this decision was made in 2006, and we may shift to Flash Video and Amazon's S3 storage as the primary "home" for our embedded videos. And full disclosure: Google CEO Eric Schmidt is also chairman of New America's board of directors -- but that connection had nothing to do with my decision to use YouTube for New America videos (or our potential shift to a different solution).

Mr. Schmidt Goes to Washington

Troy K. Schneider — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:29:34 +0000

The New America Foundation -- the think tank that signs my paychecks -- is hosting an event next Tuesday with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, focusing on tech policy, the economy and open government.

Schmidt, who chairs New America's board of directors and is also serving on President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, will be speaking at 1pm at the Ronald Reagan Building. From the official announcement:

Schmidt will explore the ways in which technology can help the new administration and Congress address two of the biggest challenges ahead: generating the kind of short- and long-term economic and job growth that can help pull the nation out of financial distress, and restoring public trust in government. He will offer specifics on such topics as the need to build a 21st Century Infrastructure, support for research and innovation, repairs for our education system, and ways to make the government more open and responsive.

The event will be webcast live, or you can RSVP to attend in the flesh at http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/eric_schmidt. Should be a good discussion...

A Smart -- and Reasonably Fair -- Way to Revisit the Gas Tax

Troy K. Schneider — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:02:31 +0000

Over on CapitalGainsandGames.com today, Andrew Samwick makes the case for increasing the gas tax -- and pairing that hike "with a reduction in the payroll tax rate that fully offsets the revenue increase." As he puts it:

At a very basic level, you get less of what you tax and more of what you don't. Looking at our long-term energy needs, every little bit of energy conservation helps. Looking particularly at our short-term macroeconomic needs, we would like to increase the returns [on] work. Both the payroll tax and the gas tax are thought to be regressive, so on balance, we are not doing much.

There are problems with that swap, since some lower-income Americans have to drive far more than others, and often have few options to reduce their mileage. In general, though, I think Andrew's right. Our recent run of $4/gallon gas showed that people will conserve when the price gets high enough. Gas may be back down to to $2/gallon now ($1.95 in Warrenton yesterday!), but it's sure to climb again -- so why not steer those dollars to our government rather than those of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela?

The idea of a price floor, as outlined by Tom Friedman, Philip Verleger Jr. and others, seems like an even better idea -- again, so long as it's balanced out by a reasonably fair cut elsewhere. But while that approach would bring the added bonus of predictable fuel prices for families, it would probably be much less predictable in terms of tax revenues generated -- and therefore harder to accurately offset with payroll or income tax cuts.

Whatever the specifics, though, I do hope the Obama administration explores something along these lines -- ideally in conjuction with tax credits and vouchers to help lower-income Americans improve their energy effiency, and not just cut back on their driving. Because this slump in energy prices certainly won't last forever...

A Bit of Liveblogging Today

Troy K. Schneider — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:33:35 +0000

... from the Media Future Now lunch discussion on the state of the (online) economy.