Category Archives: Technology

All Politics is Local, Downtown, Life in the Capital, Technology, The Daily Feed
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DC Loses CIO to Obama Administration

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘ckramer’

Hearty Congratulations to DC CIO Vivek Kundra, who is the latest victim of Obama Abduction. Well. I suppose it’s not exactly Abduction if they ask and you consent, right? Okay. We need a new word for that. Anyhow. Mr. Kundra is headed to the OMB as administrator of e-government and information technology. Not quite the cabinet-level CIO position that he was suspected to be considered for, but not exactly entry-level work.

Kundra will see Government-wide IT budgets of something on the order of $70,000,000,000. First task? Maybe some Macs for the Obama staff at the White House? I hear they’re jonesin’ hard.

Inaugupocalypse, Life in the Capital, Media, News, Technology, The Daily Feed, The Hill
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Senators Byrd, Kennedy Taken to Hospital

Photo courtesy of
‘Ambulancia’
courtesy of ‘Daquella manera’

CNN is reporting that Senators Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) were both taken from the Luncheon at the Capitol (see, Kaspar, got that one right.) after suffering medical emergencies. CNN suggests that Senator Kennedy was having a seizure, and that it was unclear the extent of the medical difficulties that Sen. Byrd was experiencing.

Technology, The Daily Feed, The District, WTF?!
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EnviroTaxi is only a Twitter Away!

dctaxi.jpg

A DC Taxi Day (though not an Envirotaxi) by Wayan

Apparently, getting a cab in DC is as easy as Twittering to @taxinow (aka EnviroRide.net taxis) your start and finish destinations, and they’ll route you a cab. For those of us who absolutely hate using the phone to talk to cab companies, this seems like a really straightforward way to get from point A to point B without having to call ahead.

Sure you might want to give it a little bit of time to get there, but this sounds vastly preferable to calling the call center, to me.

Technology, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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More on Google/WMATA


Metro Sign by tbridge

Two interesting things from the last 24 hours or so on WMATA and Google Transit that are worth another look. Yesterday morning, I got an email from Emeka Moneme, the Chief Administrative Officer of WMATA. It’s likely that I was on their list due to my signing the GGW petition encouraging Google Transit and WMATA to work together. There wasn’t much new in the email, but I found it interesting the way they concluded it: Continue reading →

Business and Money, Technology, The Daily Feed, The District
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Camera Adventures in DC

Light-up Reindeer

Light-up Reindeer

I’ve been in the market for a new camera for about 3 months. I’m a Canon guy (sorry Ben Rome, I know your love of Nikon is holy and chaste), and I’d been vacillating between an XSi and a 40D or a 50D. That is, until I came to hold a 5D Mark II. See, this isn’t just a camera, it’s an extension of God’s own eyes. Anyhow, enough hyperbole.

The problem with new cameras is that, chances are, for everyone who’s come to a decision about one, there are a dozen more who are rabidly awaiting the new body like some people wait for Christmas, or concert tickets or the second coming of Christ. When I’d made up my mind, I was behind each and every one of them. When I called Penn Camera to ask about availability, the guy did his very best not to laugh at me. He also failed. He told me it would be February or March before they’d have one for me. While chortling, just a little.

Fortunately, though, I found Dominion Camera in Falls Church. They had one last 5D that was unclaimed, as the person who’d asked for it hadn’t ever showed, and hadn’t left a deposit. After a quick drive over, their staff was amazing. They were actually busy, with several people in the shop asking all kinds of camera questions, from inexpensive point-and-shoot to expensive-DSLR, they were very knowledgeable. So, thanks Dominion, both for not laughing, and also for selling me my sweet new camera. Click on that photo above, then click Original resolution and you can see just how sweet this is going to be.

Life in the Capital, Technology, The Daily Feed, The District
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Should I Switch to Verizon?

Fountain Feet by me

I’ve been a loyal AT&T/Cingular customer for many, many years now and I have no major complaints really.  Sure, sometimes my calls get dropped when I drive under certain bridges in town, but overall I’ve been a happy customer and I love the idea of rollover minutes (even though I never seem to use them).

I’m also a gadget junky.  I’ve been reading about the Samsung Omnia for months now which was rumored to be released by AT&T in the US market.  Unfortunately it was not and Verizon is the only carrier offering the phone.  I suppose I could buy it unlocked on eBay and continue to use AT&T, but the easier thing to do might be to switch to Verizon.

Continue reading →

Technology, The Daily Feed
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Tuesday Tech Seminar Series

HacDC Opening Night Portrait
Originally uploaded by acaben

Tonight is the debut of HacDC’s Tuesday Tech Seminar Series, with seminars designed to help bring local geeks, dorks, makers and hackers closer together. In the first Tuesday Tech Seminar Series, Dorkbot DC overlords and Gareth Branwyn and Alberto Gaitán will join fellow HacDC Members Katie Bechtold (DC Linux Chix) and Nick Farr (hackerspaces.org) in a conversation on building the DC Tech Community.

The seminars will take place most Tuesdays at 8:30 PM, and will feature a wide range of topics and interactive opportunities of general interest to DC’s finest hackers. If you have any suggestions for speakers or topics, send an email to info@hacdc.org

Technology, The Daily Feed
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Is RCN Blocking Revver?

I like to use the video sharing site Revver to host the movies I make of life in DC – they share ad revenue and offer a few more options than YouTube.

But recently, I’ve noticed that the Revver URL will not resolve if I try to access it from my home. Also, sites with embedded Revver videos are slow to load as the missing video holds up the browser’s rendering of the web page. At first I thought Revver was down, then I checked my Internet connection.

Revver works fine on my neighbour’s Verizon-provided Internet and other ISPs around DC. Its only RCN accounts that seem to be unable to access Revver.

So is RCN blocking access to Revver? And if so, why?

Calls to RCN tech support go into holding patterns beyond human patience, and end with telling me to restart my router again. Like that does anything.

Arlington, Technology, The Daily Feed
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Arlington Vote Reporting FAIL

I Voted In Arlington
I Voted In Arlington by christaki

I’ve been waiting and watching the Arlington Voter Results all night, and I’ve seen the format of the page change a dozen times, but not even a single vote has been recorded on the page yet. With Virginia still in play (last time I looked it was just 12,000 votes margin between McCain and Obama) it’s absolutely amazing to me that we’re not seeing any numbers out of Arlington at all.

C’mon guys, let’s get it going.

Technology, The Daily Feed
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Street View in DC, At Last!

streets.png

Many thanks to Rob Pegararo of the Post for tweeting about the appearance of Street View for Google Maps here in DC, finally, after long last. This shot, taken on H St NW just north of the White House, is an example of Street View. What’s so utterly cool about it, though, is that the image is draggable, like moving the orientation of the camera. So you get a sweet panorama of your neighborhood.

I looked at my place, and saw both our cars, and the photos looked fairly recent, taken in Fall at any rate. I’ve seen some shots of Clarendon after a snow, and some other spots in different seasons. Spot anything cool? Let us know in the comments.

All Politics is Local, Arlington, Technology, The Daily Feed
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Incredible Turnout for Early Voting

vote!.jpg

Washington DC Paper Ballot by NewsHour

The news was out this morning that 2.6 million people had already cast their ballots in North Carolina. You’ve probably seen reports here, and elsewhere, that lines in Arlington & the District were quite lengthy, up to several hours over the weekend.

So, how did our region do? Great question. No one seems to have the answer, or, if they do, they’re not telling. My phone call to the Arlington Electoral Board went unanswered, and Dan Murphy of the DCBOEE’s voicemail is so full it’s not taking more messages.

I guess we’ll have to wait to see if they’re going to unveil the statistics now, or after the election’s complete. Either way, I suspect we’ll see some of the best turnout this region’s seen in quite some time.

[Update 1] 35,021 people voted via absentee ballot in Arlington County, through Saturday, according to the Arlington County BOE.  That’s roughly three times the number of people who voted absentee in 2004, and approximately a quarter of eligible voters.  That’s more people that voted absentee in 2008 than voted in the 2007 general election.

[Update 2] Dan Murphy from DC BOEE got back to us late in the day and said: “I can tell you that we had somewhere around 12000–I can be more specific as we go through and process them, but that is a good ballpark at this point.” So, 12k out of 300k or so. Impressive!

Technology, The Daily Feed
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OLPC News 8.2 Update Happy Hour

A toast for the 8.2.0 Upgrade

A toast for the 8.2.0 Upgrade

Do you own an XO laptop? Want to upgrade it to the new Release 8.2.0 – the new software build that will roll out with G1G1 2008? Then you need to join us for an adult XO mesh:

OLPC News 8.2.0 Update Happy Hour
Thursday, Oct 16 @ 6pm
Looking Glass Lounge
3634 Georgia Ave NW (map)

Release 8.2.0 is a funky fresh update to the XO that makes it so much more usable and interesting for children and adults – a must for any OLPC supporter.

All Politics is Local, Business and Money, Fun & Games, Media, Technology
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The City Paper Whines, “It Came From Planet Blog!”

monster.jpg
Chloe the kitten monster! by faeryboots

If you haven’t noticed, the City Paper’s in a bit of a bind. Their parent company has entered bankruptcy, staff cutbacks were threatened, and then rescinded, and now the City Paper’s cover story is in mortal danger.

How does the City Paper respond?

By dissing their readers in a 5,000 word cover story about why their reader-base is forcing them into the poor house. Or the pour-house. Their argument? People prefer blogs and new media to their extensive stories based on their crack investigative team. Shocking. Case in point, their Livingston-award winning story on the arsonist who terrorized neighborhoods in DC over a series of months getting just 5,000 pageviews while a story on Barack Obama’s spittle got them 13,000 pageviews.

No one knows this better than us. The Coffee Kerfuffle back in late July? 16,000 pageviews. Several of our great features? Under 3,000 pageviews. So, yeah, we understand how unpredictable the web is. That’s the joy of it all. Now, I recognize that the City Paper is a business, and it’s their job to make money. That’s our challenge, too. While we’re ad-free now, it’s not going to be that way forever. We just haven’t decided how to do it, yet.

I feel kinda bad for them. They seem to think that the internet came busting on into their office and crapped on their perfectly nice business model. To some extent, they’re absolutely right. But, this is the modern era, and when someone craps in your house, you have to clean it up. So, I suspect this is just the bitching phase from Wemple and his cadre of entitled journalists, upset that they’re being displaced a bit by new media that hasn’t figured out their own business models just yet.

What I can tell you? Four clickthrough pages of faux legalese blaming the readership? Yeah, that’s not going to play well. That’s a pretty shitty underhanded tactic to get you to click through several of their ads and pump their pageviews numbers up even higher. It’s not like the City Paper’s any different from all the other newspapers trying to figure out how to make money online.

Welcome to the club, guys. May the best publication win. And recognize that your competition isn’t who you think it is.

All Politics is Local, Arlington, Technology, The Daily Feed
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Robo-Poll


Clockwork Robot…
Originally uploaded by law_keven

I have a landline, but I rarely use it. Usually it’s for stuff like calling the Chinese delivery place a couple blocks over, and so I have something that really works well in my Condo. It’s not that I get calls on it. Except this morning when it rang about 10:15am. It was a robo-call, I could tell immediately, but I gave it a second to rattle off its spiel before deciding it wasn’t going to waste my time or try to sell me more credit than I need.

It asked five simple questions and the whole thing took 30 seconds:

– Who would you vote for if the election was today?
– Which party do you trust with the economy right now?
– What’s your gender?
– What’s your race?
– What’s your age group?

And away it went. But it was all automated. It wasn’t a real person making minimum wage in a call center, it was a robot doing the polling. I got a little sad. Are you telling me there’s no Josh Lyman standing over a group of midwestern transplants and telling them to spit out their gum?! Sigh. The price of progress.

Technology, The Daily Feed
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Vault Life! (Fallout 3 in DC)

How awesome is it that we have Vault-themed ads for Fallout 3 on the Metro?

Vault Life!

For those not in the know, Fallout is a series of turn-based adventure/role-play games set in the barren wasteland of a post-apocalyptic anarchy, where you play a survivor newly emerged from an isolated subterranean bunker called The Vault. DC-focused trailer video and images after the jump.

Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, Technology, The Daily Feed, The District, WMATA
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Four Line Announcements


Four Line Announcements
Originally uploaded by brownpau

Paulo captured this shot of the new Metro sign format for announcements. The old side-scrolling versions are thankfully history as they were nearly impossible to read. Thankfully, Metro’s embracing some good IA these days and going for something that’s a bit more passenger friendly than the crawl, which tended to cause crowds of gawkers while the waited for the message to finish displaying.

Technology, The Daily Feed, The Mall, We Love Arts
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The Con Artist’s Replica

ghosts.png

Want to get your stuff on display at the Smithsonian? Okay, without having to become all Andy-Warhol-famous? Compete for the Chance instead. This week’s challenge (one of six, I suspect) is called “The Con Artist’s Replica” and exhorts some creativity from the players:

Create a replica of something you desire but know you cannot have.

An ordinary con man might substitute such a replica for its model, but your replica will be more real than the original object of desire; we invite you to be a con artist.

Very slick. Get creative, win a cool spot in a curated exhibit!

Adventures, Entertainment, Technology, The Daily Feed, The District, The Hill
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Sneak Peek: The Sant Ocean Hall at NMNH

Sant Ocean Hall

Wow, what a morning. I spent the morning walking through the new Sant Ocean Hall at the National Museum of Natural History on the Mall. We got an introduction from the direct of the museum, and a great tour through the 23,000 square-foot space. We’ll have a full review up on Friday as part of our Tourism column.

However, there was one bit that was way too cool to wait for Friday to share: Science on a Sphere®. The Smithsonian’s new exhibit features this cool technology from NOAA which involves multiple projectors and a suspended gray sphere. It’s based on four desktop computers running Linux and some multiple projectors. It’s just amazing. Click on for the full size video.

Continue reading →

Business and Money, Talkin' Transit, Technology, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Metro & Google?

subway.png

When I saw this morning on Google Maps that New York City’s Subway system was finally part of Google Transit, I got mighty curious: What’s Metro doing to work on this? So, I asked WMATA’s Lisa Farbstein what was going on. Metro’s response, via Lisa, was “We have been working with Google, however a formal agreement has yet to be finalized.”

It would be so delightful if I could point people at Google Maps to do the routing, as anyone who’s ever used the Metro Public Transit Mapping Tool would know. C’mon Metro, if New York can do it, we can too, yeah?