Thursday, March 19, 2009

Darn government data hoarding, creativity stifling, non-understanding, stink-at-customer-service jerks!

So a couple of guys decide to take free VoIP (voice over the Internet) software and a bit of programming skill and make available – for free – the availability of parking spots in Ann Arbor, MI. Sure, you could go to the City's web site to see it, or try calling one of the decks until you found one that was open, but this offered so many more options – and it was a cool use of technology, with publicly available data. Then the government found out about it…

You can read the entire story of the features, fights and future of the Ann Arbor Parking Data service on the VoIPTechChat site. I'm curious about your take on this…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty cool...surprised this is all seen as "new" and that there are opportunities in this space. I thought it was all done by now. Folks were hooking Coke and coffee machines up to the Internet for status info 20 years ago.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, people just don’t get it do they… We might as well all just go back to the dark ages and make offerings to the deity of the week.