Where's the world ending today?

File Under: I ♥ APIs

» http://thegreengrass.net/fourpocalypse

Something that anyone who's used Foursquare over the past few winters will know is that whenever anything more than a few flurries happens, you instantly start seeing venues with names like "SNOWPOCALYPSE!!!!" all over the region, like this one from last winter. They're fun, festive social events that make something that people might otherwise find annoying fun. At least those on Foursquare.

Since I've been an avid Foursquare user for about a year and a half now, and I love the occasional disaster scenario, I put together a way to locate all types of -pocalypses around you at http://thegreengrass.net/fourpocalypse. You can either let the browser find your near apocalyptic situation or give it a location to search around. And remember, never forget.

Imagining better election reporting

File Under: Civic Good

» http://thegreengrass.net/phillyelections

As the dust was settling after the latest election in Philadelphia, I had a thought as I was looking at results on the official Philadelphia election results website. All the relevant information was there, but the presentation was less than ideal. For instance, there are a few different rules governing who actually gets elected for offices such as the At-Large council seats or the three sheriff positions, but there's no explanation on the site as to how it really works. And results for each office weren't sorted by vote percentage. As a proof of concept, I put together a site to demonstrate how this could've been done better. I'm hoping that with the election wins by Al Schmidt and Stephanie Singer, two of the more progressive candidates for the office, mean we'll have better election results in the future. The proof of concept site can be found at http://thegreengrass.net/phillyelections.

As an added bonus, Technically Philly did a little write up on this.