The King

A state legislator, Kris Amundson, reminds us in a blog posting that an elected official who blogs can always make his or her points in a more creative, original and compelling way ... and also be responsible for an Elvis sighting!

Mapping out the present and future

Check out this great new mapping website from the city of Seattle. I bet everyone would love to put their town 'on the map' like this. There's a lot going on with mapping, such as Zoodango, a site that notes local attractions and lets people rank and share information about them.

If you couple all this work with technology that makes this information portable - even wearable - the potential is amazing. Wouldn't it be great if a citizen could point their augmented reality glasses or headset, or whatever, at a city building or an entire civic complex and have the device tell the person what services are where?

Imagine a world where taxpayers can ask their machine to give them directions to a place that's being discussed by their City Council ... which of course is possible with GPS technology ... but then also get relevant information about the proposal onsite through one of these devices. And then ... be able to make a 'public comment' then and there by dictating into a machine that saves the feedback for the council?

OK, we're aways from that ... but these are clearly exciting times.