Synteractive is a strategy and business solutions consulting firm specializing in
leveraging the power of information to radically improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of complex organizations. Synteractive has a proven record of using Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server (MOSS) technology to aid in business transformation efforts of both
federal government agencies and private companies. They will leverage their unrivaled
expertise in Web 2.0 technology implementation to transform Recovery.gov from a mere
information dissemination website into an interactive platform where Americans can
swap stories about stimulus projects in their areas, upload pictures illustrating the
effects of the projects, blog about their experiences, and ultimately engaged as a
meaningful member of the Recovery community.

First off, why build a transparent application in Sharepoint! Secondly, have you seen any government sites that allow users to blog and upload pictures? Can’t wait to see this in action!

Oh yeah, hopefully Smartronix isn’t letting Syneractive design the website, it looks really bad!

Contract Documents for Recovery.gov can be found at http://www.recovery.gov/?q=node/765 <– where are the pretty urls?
PDF that shows above quote Page 5 Section 2.2 on this document http://www.recovery.gov/sites/default/files/508%20Second%20Modification%20Managment%20Proposal.pdf

So It’s been 100 days since the widget had gone live and we have seen the following numbers

• 1,864,904 Views, the widget is getting an average of 30,000 views a day!
• 487,423 Unique Visitors
• 57,832 Installs
• Oh yeah… we are now at ObamaCountdownWidget.com too!

I sort of like this graph since it’s AT&T’ish. I can now say we’ve got bars in more places!  This graph show the number of unique visitors by month. 

So, how many days are left?

The article is in print only. I haven’t found it online but I took some photos below to share if you aren’t a subscriber to the Washingtonian.

Talks I am attended:

1. Cradle 2 Grave II: Innovation using citizen talent and open data
2. What’s going on at Sunlight Labs
3. Use cases I: Assume open data, now what?
4. Recovery.gov tech session REST/Atom/LOD

Follow transparency camp with:

• Twitter
• Flickr

Click here to view the embedded video.

Park It DC

I guess it’s better late than never to post about the application that I created for “Apps for Democracy.”  Apps for Democracy was a innovation contest in DC that was put on by the DC Government and iStrategyLabs.  The goal was to save money and open  geographic information that the Gov’t had to the public to see what kinds of technology innovations they could come up with.  At the end of a month long contest $20,000 in cash prizes would be awarded to the best innovations.  You can hear a radio interview about the contest at Federal News Radio.

So I decided to enter the contest and see what I could come up with.  There was a bunch of feeds to choose from and I was pretty sure that everyone one was going to do something with crime since that feed was the most readily available.  After reviewing all the available feeds I decided that the biggest problem I had with DC was trying to find a place to park that wouldn’t cost me money and didn’t require a permit. This leads me to my application which would be to take all the parking meter data and data about parking in Washington, DC and plot it on a map and spit out real time information about a specific parking locations.  The web application as then called “Park It DC.”

You can find more about the application at www.parkitdc.com.  The application is fully open source and currently is an active project.  If you want to join the project just head over to http://code.google.com/p/parkitdc/ or email us at join@parkitdc.com so that we can add you to the developers list.

So what does the future hold for Park It DC?  Fist off I am hoping to get more developers to help with bugs and features!  Secondly there are some problems with the site that need to be fixed before we push out new feature requests.  The contest was a month long so I had to get something out quick.  Therefore, it was not commented well if at all, and some of the code is pretty sloppy.  We will fix all of this in the coming weeks.  Next, are some new feature requests that I would like to get out.  Here is a list of requests that I am currently working on.

1. iPhone and Blacberry application.  Why not be able to get this information when you are in an area?  This is probably one of the most requested features.  If you can help please let me know! I currently don’t have a Apple Developer license.
2. Add More Parking Garages.  Currently I just do a screen scrape on Colonial Parking Inc. and PMI’s websites to grab parking locations in DC.  Am going to try to work with these and other parking companies throughout DC to get them to feed me data about parking lots including pricing and hours or operation.
3. Charts.  A couple have asked for charts and statistics about crime, broken meters and % of spots that are free Vs. pay.  People like charts so I think this would be a good addition.  Right now the vision is to use Google Charts.
4. Update parking meter data.  This should be coming in 2009 for DC GIS department.

If you have any requests you would like to see you can log them in our project area at http://code.google.com/p/parkitdc/ or develop them yourself and submit into the repository.

So that’s the vision for the Park It DC.  If you haven’t seen the app then stop over to www.parkitdc.com and check it out.  We even have a widget that you can put on your iGoogle page!

The Park It DC application took silver at the “Apps for Democracy” contest.  You can see a full list of winners here.

podCampDC is this weekend and I hope to be on twitter and writing some posts while I am there. I looked at the schedule for speakers and plan on attending the following;

• 10AM: New Media Marketing: How New Media Powers Business. Christopher Penn
• 11AM: Not sure yet. Any Suggestions?
• 1PM: Making Your Video Shareable – Justin Thorp
• 2PM: Social Media and New Journalism – Andy Carvin and Jim Long
• 3PM: Identity, Privacy, and Security: How are they different in social web environments?- Andrew Feinberg OR Power Your Personal Network with LinkedIn – Christopher Penn and Dan Williams

Things get started on Friday at Capitol City Brewing (Metro Center Metro Stop) Capitol City Brewing (Union Station Metro Stop) at 8PM. See you all soon!

Thanks!