Stories
Many projects I do in my spare time are purely for the exercise and learning experience. I have been developing a tool I am calling social budgets.
I am very political, but I get frustrated when I don't fully understand what is going on at a state and federal level. I like to have a deep understanding before I take action or even open my mouth.
So I wanted to understand where the State of Oregon is spending their money and create a way I can voice my opinion on
Someone needs to create an open source version of data.gov.
Every city, county and state municipalities need a copy. There needs to be a well written, secure and standards based open source version available.
It would be setup identical with:
RAW Data Catalog with XML, CSV, KML, etc data files
Tool Catalog or Marketplace
GeoData Catalog
It would also give all the links to integra...
I pulled this from the Google Research Blog. I was going to write my own, but they said it all. I just modified a little:
Database systems are notorious for being hard to use. It is even more difficult to integrate data from multiple sources and collaborate on large data sets with people outside your organization. Without an easy way to offer all the collaborators access to the s...
I wanted to reintroduce everyone to Google Charts. If you haven't heard about it, it is a quick and easy way to create chart from data sources.
It is so easy to use. I think it is a tool that more people need to hear about and understand how they can easily use to embed charts in web pages, word documents, pdfs, spreadsheets and much more.
To create a chart, all you do is pass your data and labels for the data using a URL or web...
I was doing my taxes the other day. I thought to myself. Where does all my tax money go.
For quite a while I thought how nice it would be to be able to tell the government how to spend my money. I would like a multiple choice form showing how I want it spent.
Everyone told me it would not happen in my life tim...
I came across a blog post in the Huffington Post called, "Schwarzenegger Proposes Budget For 'Tough Times'". So I went and checked out the California Proposed Budget for 2010 and 2011.
I am seeing a lot of PDF documents available regarding the budget, but no data feeds or spreadsheets.
I went ahead and plugged the
I was looking for some nice CSS styling for text and memo boxes tonight. I stumbled across CSS Portal.
They have some great information to improve your CSS skils. I found some greate CSS text boxes, CSS memo boxes, and CSS buttons.
There ...
I am trying to find to find an appropriate solution for a friend that will allow him to manage a photo collection. Rather than build something from scratch I thought I'd take a look to see whats out there.
I came across Plogger, a great open-source web photo gallery.
It is an excellent example of quality FREE / Open Source software that has a single purpose and lives up to it.
I just quickly do...
I am going through the 2009-2011 Governor's Recommended Budget for Oregon. I can get at some pretty good PDF docuemtns with information on budget. Good data in there.
Problem is I can't get it in any digestable format. XML? CSV? Excel? JSON?
Someday all city, state and federal governments will have to publish all of their data via API.
Luckily in Adobe PDF Reader I can just highlight the tabular data, right...
Google Feed Server is an open source Atom Publishing Protocol server based on the Apache Abdera framework. Google Feed Server provides a simple back end for data adapters, which allows developers to quickly deploy a feed for an existing data source such as a database.
Google Feed Server also provid...
I came across a cloud backup tool the other day called backupify. It runs in the cloud and backs up your cloud.
Very cool.
backupify is pretty easy to setup. It acts like most social aggregators like Friendfeed, however it then backs up your data rather than syndicating it or providing a single feed.
I authorized backupify to access the following accou...
Just finished reading Activism 2.0: Creating Casablanca in Copenhagen, The Fresh Air Center by Chrissie Brodigan.
It is an interesting look at what happened (or didn't) in Copenhagen and more specifically at the Activism 2.0 techniques of TckTckTck's Fresh Air Center
IT tends to scoff at cloud computing. But obviously, there's a fear factor, too. If IT is too caught up in other projects to have the resources to launch some new initiative, the business side may threaten to use a cloud service instead.
Just doing some reading and organizing thoughts on Twitter Hash Tags. Seems like hash tag management is becoming a regular occurrence in every day business.
Companies should be establishing, disseminating, and evaluating hash tags for their company. Seems like at a basic level a company should establish and regularly use # hash tags for their company. #KinLane
Then they should then establish # hash t...
My Firefox browser opens all my default tabs when it opens and gives me quick access to all my core web applications. One of these is Google Voice.
I am still working Google Voice into my overall platform. It isn't quite there.
Today I was thinking about some good uses for it beyond receiving calls. I was mourning the deactivation of Google Noteb...
Always on the watch for quality file management tools to suggest to people. Nomadesk virtual fileserver acts just like a hard drive, storing important documents in one place with local and remote access from a PC, Mac or iPhone. You drag and drop your files into a virtual fileserver and files are automatically encrypted, backed up and available for file sharing. With Nomadesk, you can organize your files and folders just like any hard drive on your computer with no new interface to learn.
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I was just going through my Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, and Feedburner stats. I noticed in my Google Webmaster Tools that I come up number 7 in Google Search for Enterprise 2.0. So I went to Google and typed it in.
Sure enough I'm number 5 for Enterprise 2.0. I even beat o...
I was going through the different areas of my Google Wave research this evening. It was time to learn more about the Google Wave Federated Protocol. I just haven't had enough time to keep reading on the subject.
So to update my research:
Google released their open source version of the Google Wave Federation Prototype Server.
I was playing with Google Wave tonight. I am curious to see how I can use it. I keep thinking about using Google Wave as a content management system (CMS).
I am starting with the basics. First I started a new wave and filled it with some dummy content.kinlane-productions2
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I strongly believe in the cloud, and more specifically in Amazon's approach to cloud computing. I constantly battle people on my decision to use the cloud for my core IT infrastructure. It allows me to scale my infrastructure as needed and gave a completely new face to my IT strategy and operat...
I woke up one morning and got an email from a project manager. The original email from a client had a returned email with the following email server response:
Remote server replied: 550 5.7.1 ... Mail from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx blocked using Trend Micro RBL+. Please see http://www.mail-abuse.com/cgi-bin/lookup?ip_address=xx.xxx.xxx.xxx
We were black liste...
