Check out a few of the stories, news clips, images, maps and vids bouncing around the OpenPlans office, where the windows won’t open, but our office chatter is
- Patents and the patent trolls who abuse them. This American Life explores how intellectual property and patent law is stifling invents and being abused. When Patents Attack! NPR
- Will notoriously image-conscious San Franciscoans finally start taking mass transit if BMW designs the trains? BMW DesignWorks USA to collaborate on interior of new BART cars Core 77
- The B63′s BusTime gets as many texts daily as a popular teenaged student (700 a day!) TransportationNation
- In the early part of the century, NYC tolled the Williamsburg Bridge- what would have happened if those tolls weren’t removed? 31 b-b-b-b-billion dollars would have happened….
- Developments in alt-people moving:
- Ubs vs. Googs: Google shut down the Estimated Time of Arrival API due to inaccuracy. The Atlantic – Meanwhile Uber’s pool of drivers and better API gives quality real time and reliable ETA data Uberblog
- Neighbortree offers homeowners and HOAs a unique neutral platform for all residents to contribute in a social neighborhood based network social network a constructive manner. Neighbortree.com
- And now for why we are all here, maps:
- The Connected States of America. good magazine This is what our state lines might look like if we drew them based on who actually talks with each other.
- Rebooting Massachusetts Massachusetts boundaries redrawn on administration, politics, natural resources and even its donut addiction.
- MyBlockNYC explore and interact with user-generated video that captures each unique, interesting and sometimes crazy moment around New York City’s 90,000 blocks But our Jeff Maki did it before it was cool and mainstream
- The Hyperlocal Running Map a really pretty visualization of one man’s jogging paths through DC
- Proof that NYC is always changing, a photograph: “WaterTowers: What goes up/ must come down: A view from the OpenPlans kitchen” (alternatively named: “Watertower is dead, long live Watertower!”)
via EpicGraphics Something to chew on this weekend.