1. The secret life of the subway

    In doing some photo hunting for a side project, I came across this gem of a photo on Flickr.

    Riding the subway all over the city, I often think about the fact that most great subway moments (and many great city moments, for that matter) go unrecorded. Perhaps this is part of the beauty of it — there are only participants; no watchers — but I often wish I had a camera built into my eyes to catch the great little moments that happen almost every day.

    Musicians on the train are a real special treat; I love the fact that for just a few minutes, perhaps just the distance between two stops, a little concert takes place.  For that short period of time, riders goes from being disconnected strangers to inadvertent partners, with feet tapping and heads nodding.

    This photo has an almost Rockwell-esque quality to it, and you’ve gotta love the angry glare from the woman in the corner.

    by Nick on 8/29/2008 comments (0) tags: ,

  2. Eyes on the Street: RUOK?

    I came across this enigmatic construction sign yesterday on the side of the West Side Highway in Manhattan. I did a double-take, trying to determine if, perhaps, I was the only one who could see this message.

    What do you see? I honestly can’t think of a reasonable explanation…

    by Nick on 7/26/2008 comments (1) tags:

  3. Coming soon: Park(ing) Day 2008

    In the spirit of blogging all the cool stuff we’re doing at TOPP, I’d like to announce the launch of a new website: Park(ing) Day NYC. Park(ing) Day is a global event, originally conceived by awesome SF-based arts collective REBAR, where for a single day, regular parking spaces are “leased” for use as temporary public parks. This year’s Park(ing) Day will be held, worldwide, on September 19th.

    Here’s the description from the national Park(ing) day website:

    On November 16th, 2005, REBAR opened eyes worldwide by transforming a metered parking spot into a park. Locating a site that was underserved by public outdoor space, we installed a small, temporary park that provided nature, seating, and shade. By our calculations, we provided 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that afternoon. See the original PARK(ing) video!

    Since the initial PARK(ing) project was created we’ve been contacted by people worldwide. What began as a simple, playful idea has become a lively and visible symbol of the desire to reprogram the street and increase public open space in cities all over the planet.

    TOPP produced the website that supports Park(ing) Day NYC, working with Transportation Alternatives, who is organizing and promoting the event here in NYC. TA is giving out mini-grants of $200 each for Park(ing) spot makers, so apply now. This year’s event is also co-sponsored by the EyeBeam Art & Technology Center, who will hopefully encourage some creative submissions.

    (For you web geeks out there, the Park(ing) Day NYC site was made using Pylons and jQuery, and was built using the codebase we originally created for Block Party NYC)

    Be sure to check out these videos, which are the best way to get the feel for the event.

    The original Park(ing) experiment in 2005:

    The first Park(ing) Day in SF in 2006:

    and Park(ing) Day 2007 here in NYC:

    by Nick on 7/22/2008 comments (0) tags: , , , , ,

  4. Streetfilm about Bastille Day

     

    Bastille Day on Smith Street is one of my favorite days of the year.  It’s great fun: the streets are closed, sand is trucked in, and a giant Petanque tournament is held.  But the tournament is just an excuse to be there: the real fun is the great food & drink put out by Bar Tabac and other neighborhood restaurants, live music all day long, and hoards of neighborhood folks who come out to spend the day lounging in the streets.  

    This year, Nick Whitaker from Streetfilms and I spent the afternoon filming the event, and the result is the Streetfilm you see above.  Can’t wait until next year!

    More on this year’s event from Pardon Me for Asking and McBrooklyn.  Also, I heard a rumor that there’s a time-lapse video of the setup, event, and tear-down from a few years ago that I’ll try to get my hands on.

    by Nick on 7/14/2008 comments (1) tags: ,

  5. New TOPP Website

    Over at The Open Planning Project, we’ve always had a bit of a hard time explaining what we do.  That job just got a little bit easier, with the launch of the new-and-improved TOPP website last Friday.  Reactions from within the staff have been remarkably similar: something along the lines of “Phew, now I can finally tell people what the heck it is we do here!’.

    Kudos to Vanessa, Jackie and Cholmes for distilling a lot of information about our various projects and goals into something remarkably coherent.  I’m proud to work at TOPP, and now I have somewhere to point people when I want to show it off :)

    by Nick on 7/12/2008 comments (1) tags:

  6. Slip-n-Slide Photo Gallery

    A few months ago, I wrote up a simple javascript photo gallery viewer for a side project, so I thought I’d offer it up to the world. It’s unobtrusive javascript, and it takes a simple list of photos and turns it into a slidey slide show. It’s built on top of the Ext Javascript Framework, but could easily be adapted to work with others.

    More info, download & demo

    Enjoy!

    by Nick on 7/10/2008 comments (0) tags: ,

  7. Web App of the Week: SmartyPig

    I stumbled upon SmartyPig this week while looking through the Happy Cog website, after reading a Zeldman post, linked to by Daring Fireball, which was brought to me via Melkjug. Gotta love the blogosphere.

    Now, after all that, not only do I have a new Favorite Web App, but I have a new bank. My friends know that I’m a bit of a Web App Slut, willing to give away my most personal information for a chance to try out a shiny new web app (here’s looking at you, Wesabe). Well, I’m not doing anything to dispel that notion today.

    Here’s the gist of it: Smarty Pig is a social savings bank, where you create personal savings goals and then set up automated deposits to reach them. They have a noble goal: to get people back in the habit of saving, by making it fun. And I must say, I think it’s a great idea.

    I haven’t gotten into the social side of it yet, but the idea there is that you can create public goals that your friends and others can contribute to. So far, I’ve just been experimenting with creating private goals; for example, saving a little $$ for our federal income taxes (for which we always seem to come up a bit short):

    As you can see, your personal savings goals are tracked using a cute little piggy bank, which you can watch fill up and feel good about your progress (I already do, with my measly 10%). More importantly, the money is actually in a completely separate account, making it that much more difficult to spend in a moment of weakness. Meanwhile, you’re earning 3.9%.

    I’m going to give this one a shot and see how it goes, but I have a feeling I’m going to like it

    by Nick on 7/4/2008 comments (1) tags: ,

  8. Sendible: “inspired by” Facebook

    I came across a post this morning about a new service called Sendible. The basic idea is this: create messages of various types (email, sms, twitter tweets, facebook messages, etc) in advance, then sit back and relax as they get sent out right on schedule. Interesting idea — apparently there are a few other services out there who do something similar — not something I knew I needed, but intriguing enough that I decided to give it the old college try.

    This isn’t a post about how Sendible works; I wasn’t even able to get that far. This is a post about inspiration and, dare I say, plagiaration. What struck me from my first interaction with sendible was the remarkable likeness it bore to Facebook, in terms of visual design. Take, for example, the login screen:

    I thought: “Wow, those look a lot like the Facebook blue buttons. Interesting… perhaps Facebook is inspiring some sort of standardization in UI elements”. Then, I thought: “Wow, look at the sidebar over on the right side; that kinda looks like Facebook too. Lemme take a look”:

    That was enough to get me thinking, and mentally prepare this blog post. But I waited and decided to give Sendible a little more time. Next stop: my homepage:

    Maybe it’s just me, but I was again really blown away by the near exact likeness this (albeit in reverse) that this bears to Facebook:

    Of course, I’m all for “fake it till you make it” and “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” but this seems to take it perhaps just a step too far. At least make it green or orange! Thoughts?

    Now, time to me to get back to the real business of deciding whether or not I need a message scheduler in my life…

    by Nick on 7/1/2008 comments (6) tags: , ,

  9. Make Music New York 2008

    In addition to being the first day of summer, yesterday was the second annual Make Music New York festival. It’s really an incredible event — musicians of all abilities and genres take to the streets to play free mini-concerts. The event came to NYC for the first time last year, and we had a great time playing, but it’s been going on across the world for over 25 years:

    Make Music New York is based on France’s Fete de la Musique, which has been a great success for 25 years. Since it was inaugurated, the festival has become an international phenomenon, celebrated on the same day in more than 300 cities in 108 countries, including Germany, Italy, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Australia, Vietnam, Congo, Cameroon, Togo, Columbia, Chile, Mongolia, and Japan.

    We didn’t get to spend as much time as we would have liked exploring the event, but we saw a few nice moments. Sax on the Brooklyn Bridge, above, and this accordion concert (!) at Houston & 1st:

    by Nick on 6/22/2008 comments (0) tags: , ,

  10. Coming soon… Pedestrian Power

    I’ve heard this story in various forms over the past few years, but according to the London Times, pedestrian power is ready to be harnessed:

    Underfloor generators, powered by “heel strike” and designed by British engineers, may soon be installed in supermarkets and railway stations.

    The technology could use the footsteps of pedestrians to power thousands of lightbulbs at shopping centres. It works by using the pressure of feet on the floor to compress pads underneath, driving fluid through mini-turbines that then generate electricity, which is stored in a battery.

    Apparently, this technology can also be used to harness power from anything that regularly moves due to environmental factors: train & car bridges, antennas, buildings, etc.

    Photo: Preshaa on Flickr, who is also working on turning this graphic into a t-shirt. Vote for it on Threadless!
    Story via Antonio

    by Nick on 6/22/2008 comments (0) tags: ,
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