April 2012
1 post
“Silicon Valley is high school. But it’s only the smart kids, and everyone...”
– It’s official: Silicon Valley is The OC.
Bravo has apparently commissioned a show called “Silicon Valley”, which will follow people “on the road to becoming techie superstars”. If you care to see a preview, skip forward to the 1:30 mark on the video below:
link
...
March 2012
7 posts
1 tag
Living in the Big App-le Where There's An App for... →
New York Daily News article featuring Taxonomy:
nycdigital:
Here are the top mobile applications to put the city in your pocket
Why are posts about the Geeklist controversy being...
Long story short- Geeklist had a public falling out with a female developer over a promo video they made. A storify of the tweets was made, and started rocketing around the internet. Unless you’re on Hacker News, in which case it never happened.
Well, it depends when you visited Hacker News. If it was this morning, then you had the chance to join in on a lively debate on the topic. It got...
2 tags
So, the City wants a taxi smartphone app...
Well, file this one under “interesting news”. Today the Taxi and Limousine Commission uploaded a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a smartphone app allowing users to pay for their journey using their smartphone. Oh, and they welcome any applications which include extra functionality, sort of like the stuff Taxonomy does.
OK, I’m not getting carried away just yet.
I’m not...
1 tag
1 tag
NYC BigControversy
Over the weekend, Joshua Brustein of the New York Times published an article about the NYC BigApps program. Boy, did it strike a nerve. It discussed the perceived failure of previous winners Roadify and Sportaneous and the effect the contest has had on other government transparency initiatives, while not mentioning BigApps success stories like myCityWay. As an entrant in this year’s...
February 2012
11 posts
Windows 8: highlighting the stupidity of Hulu and...
Windows 8, Microsoft tells us, is going to be everywhere. My PC, my tablet, my phone… all running the same OS, providing a consistent experience on all. Your laptop will even have a Bing Maps app, just like a tablet. Wifi connections are also everywhere these days, too. And laptops with built-in 3G connections are surfacing all over the place.
So, fast-forward a few months and imagine me...
1 tag
My app has to dodge around government regulation....
Update: It seems from some of the discussion that this post has been misintepreted: it wasn’t intended as a complaint about the government. Rather, I wanted to highlight that small startups don’t have the capacity to lobby for government change, so we have no choice but to dodge around regulations. That puts us behind larger corporations- is there anything we can do to change that? We...
1 tag
CartoDB Blog: Taxonomy: Your taxi experience in... →
cartodb:
Alastair Coote, a web developer currently living in New York, is writing a series of posts about the development of Taxonomy, a taxi assistant app he made using a free dataset of taxi drivers’ names and IDs, available at the NYC Open Data website.
Taxonomy uses the…
2 tags
What's next for Taxonomy?
Taxonomy is in the App Store, and the NYC BigApps contest is in full swing. The public vote has been nothing short of insanity, and Taxonomy has next to zero chance of making it within the top two and winning the public vote prize. But that’s fine by me- there are eleven other awards up for grabs and it’s kind of liberating to be able to renew my focus on them.
So, with that in...
1 tag
Think all government data is boring? Think again:...
There’s a ton of government data out there- you probably already know that. But it’s no good to you, right? Education statistics, financial reports… very important stuff, of course, but kind of… dry. Not exactly “every day use” sort of stuff.
Well, I’m going to try to challenge that perception a little. I signed up for a contest called NYC BigApps, which...
1 tag
Vote for Taxonomy in the NYC BigApps contest! →
Hey folks. My taxi-tracking app, Taxonomy, is entered into an app creation contest. There’s a public voting section, and it’s currently tied in 9th place. I need to push ahead! I’d appreciate your votes:
http://bit.ly/yURqU8
HTTP referrers: a good thing or a bad thing?
During my daily browsing of Hacker News, I found a submission lamenting the forced move from browser to app when consuming content on a tablet. Too true- it’s infuriating. But it’s worse than that- it breaks one of the little underpinnings of the web that almost all web devs use, but rarely consider in their own projects- HTTP referrers.
It reminded me of a very unexpected- but...
1 tag
Fun with analytics: pitting Hacker News and...
I noticed a weird anomaly in my analytics today. It started shortly after midday EST on Monday, and lasted for approximately 24 hours. What was the shape of this crazy UFO-style disturbance? Something like this:
I call it the snapped hockey stick.
The anomaly was my post about making custom maps for my app, Taxonomy. I submitted it to both Hacker News and /r/programming, and to my surprise it...
Vote for my app! Daily! →
Tumblrators:
I’m really happy that everyone enjoyed my article on making custom maps. The app I made them for is entered into a competition, and you can vote for it once per day. So if you have a few spare minutes, I’d be very grateful:
http://bit.ly/yURqU8
2 tags
I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt...
Lately, I’ve been making an app called Taxonomy (that desperately needs your votes …sorry). It’s designed to make your taxi experience better- a traveling companion, if you will. Going by the logic that a lot of people (in New York, at least) only really travel in taxis when out at night, I decided that it ought to have a dark colour scheme. Not morbid dark, but, y’know,...
2 tags
Introducing... Taxonomy
I made an app. If you’d like, you can go straight to it’s NYC BigApps page (and give it a vote!). Or, I can tell you a story.
State of the Taxis
There are over thirteen thousand taxis in New York City. Chances are, if you’re not taking the subway to your destination, you’re in a taxi. Unfortunately, our experiences with them aren’t always that positive. I took a...
January 2012
1 post
1 tag
Dear Tech Community, We Have A Communication...
Today is the big day. Wikipedia is out. Google is doodle-out. I wanted to play my part, so I headed down to the NYTM protest outside the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand. It was a fantastic sight- the turnout seems to have been huge, and the majority of people were carrying signs and placards.
Sadly, I couldn’t stay for long (indeed, the protest is still going on as I write) so my...
November 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Where the hacky things are- NYC BigApps
I signed up attend the NYC BigApps Hackathon with the honest intention of not writing a single line of code. I was there to represent RecordSetter as an API provider, and I figured I’d take a back seat, live tweet/blog the event and take some photos (I brought my SLR and everything!). Things didn’t really work out that way.
I was already restless by the end of Friday evening-...
1 tag
“The biggest risk in doing a startup is not the financial risk per se.
...”
– http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231751
NYC BigApps hackathon this weekend →
I’ll be representing RecordSetter and generally getting involved as best I can this weekend- hope to see you there.
1 tag
“COULD THE UNIONS MAKE BRITAIN’S SWANS IMPOTENT?”
– A classic from the Daily Mail headline generator: http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/
October 2011
2 posts
September 2011
2 posts
1 tag
New York I Love You, But US Immigration Policy Is...
Oh, how quickly things change.
Just last month, I was excited to hear that US Immigration Services were listening to the tech/startup community about how to make America more competitive and make the lives of people like me easier. To recap, I’m a British citizen living in New York working for a startup through an H1B visa. I’m very happy where I am, but this startup stuff is...
Tech City UK: Britain's Silicon Valley? How about...
Nearly three years ago I moved from the UK to New York to start working for a tech company here in the city. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by the incredible startup culture that seems to permeate the city- I almost couldn’t imagine going back to work in the UK ever again.
So, it’s been fantastic to read about the steps the UK government is taking to encourage more high tech...
August 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Government is confusing.
The ‘Reinvent NYC.gov’ event I attended this past weekend was great. I saw some fantastic ideas, and some great demonstration of why government web sites have fundamentally different aims than others (there was one presentation that discussed reducing the amount of time people spend on the site- I was expecting the guys visiting from Facebook to spontaneously combust at that point)....
WatchMy moment of semi-fame.
nycdigital:
Video of Reinvent NYC.GOV hackathon by Rebecca Davis at the New York Daily News
“AirBnBnMethDen could vet the meth ahead of time as a service to both host and...”
– Hilarious suggestion for AirBnB following their “meth den” crisis: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2830147
July 2011
1 post
1 tag
Better base64 uri detection with Modernizr
A few weeks ago I was pointed in the direction of the Modernizr project. It’s great- you can detect what next-generation HTML5 features a user’s browser is capable of, and adapt your JS+CSS accordingly.
But it was missing a test. For a file uploader I’m working on right now (more about that in the future) I need to be able to know if a browser is capable of taking a Base 64...
June 2011
2 posts
9 tags
April 2011
4 posts
1 tag
3 tags
webpy on Google App Engine- making that template...
So, Google App Engine fascinates me a bit- shove some code on there, and let Google worry about the scaling, the CDN, the data storage… it’s tempting. So I figured I’d take it for a test drive. While looking around for a framework, I discovered webpy. It’s simple, lightweight, fast… it does everything I need.
But, disaster. It turns out that GAE has disabled certain...
Hmm. Tumblr.
I have high hopes for you, Tumblr.
I’ve tried to create blogs before now and have burnt out almost immediately because the pressure is simply too much to bear. I think that short-form will suit me well. Expect random observations of the web world, code snippets, random photos and who knows what else.