Monday, December 25, 2006

When citizens take information into their own hands SFist tells us a citizen-created Fast-Pass sale location & Google maps mashup provides what San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI ) doesn't do well. The MUNI site only provides a text list of Fast-Pass sales locations sorted by zip codes, which are not showing what is actually nearby. SFist says it better: If Hilary Duff's stirring portrayal of Marie Antoinette has taught us anything, it's that the downtrodden citizenry will only take so much s**t before they rise up against their lazy, useless oppressors. Take Muni, for example. Ordinary civilian internet users, once begrudgingly content with Muni's hopeless website and its tendancy to warp information in impossible confusion, have taken things into their own hands. Behold, a civilian-created FastPass-Vendor Google-Maps mashup! Oh, sweet Google map, how you soothe our fiery outrage. Mmmmm, tasty. I'm quoting that. Not my writing style but SFist provides a fun read. They also express their expectation of government: We'd have thought that an agency whose function was to move people about the city would have an aptitude for providing, y'know, STREET MAPS, but no -- Muni expects you to do some kind of zip-code-based geographical arithmetic in your head and magically divine the closest vendor. Obviously they're happier with the map mashup. Where else could we mashup for better government information to citizens? DMV? CalTrans Highway work and alerts? 4:27:53 PM    comment []

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