Tweet3po Bug Fixes

Two bug fixes today:

1. Rearranged the order of information on the tweets to bring the activity type and location to the front of the tweet with the neighborhood and city hashtags at the end. This is to facilitate being able to see more relevant information when alerts for tweets or text messages come on various devices (mobile phones for example).
2. Replaced forward slashes “/” with ampersands “&” for street corner locations to be compatible with Google and Bing maps

Opening government, the Chicago way

Chicago looks to use its data, developers and citizens to become a smarter city.

Cities are experimenting with releasing more public data, engaging with citizens on social networks, adopting open source software, and finding ways to use new technologies to work with their citizens. They’ve been doing it through the depth of the Great Recession, amidst aging infrastructure, spiraling costs and flat or falling budgets. In that context, using technology and the Internet to make government work better and cities smarter is no longer a “nice to have” … it’s become a must-have.

HowTo: Social Media Crime Fighting

ORLANDO, Fla. – Neighbors in a downtown Orlando neighborhood used social media to help find a suspect involved in a stabbing .  Using the Tweet3po platform, which leverages social media and text messaging to communicate, raise awareness and get people involved, neighbors in the Lake Eola Heights Historic District helped identify the suspect who was arrested and charged in stabbing a neighbor. 

But first, they had to convince neighbors that the current Neighborhood Watch didn’t work.  That the traditional telephone communications were not feasible in a modern world.  The began teaching older neighbors about text messaging and FaceBook.  Helping them switch to bright screened Windows Phones, Androids and iPhones, add SMS packages to their accounts, open FaceBook and Twitter accounts and get them subscribed to their neighborhood Tweet3po feed.  This led to awareness, and participation and eventually, the capture of a suspect in a very violent crime.

So, that’s the Tweet3po model:

1. Start a neighborhood FaceBook page
2. Start a neighborhood Twitter account
3. Get your neighbors involved!
4. Have your local agency (police, fire, etc) post their dispatch data in an rss, Atom or ODATA feed like this
5. Find neighborhood polygon boundaries or other interesting geographic data for your city like this. 
6. Contact US and we’ll get you setup in the system! 

 So, it’s as easy as that

GovTwit – the Government Twitter Directory

GovTwit – the Government Twitter Directory hosts the world’s largest list of government agencies on Twitter, tracking state/local, federal, contractors, media, academics, non-profits and government outside of the U.S.  Visit them at http://twitter.com/GovTwit.