Kin Lane

My thoughts on technology and life

Download my Credit Card Statements

It just drives me nuts that I can’t get good data access to my credit cards.  I just want an easy download of ALL my credit card transactions.

You’d think you could but Chase now B of A.  You just can’t easily.

Ok…I was able to download an easy spreadsheet for last year at American Express.

Top Social Network Promotion on Web Site

I was setting up a demonstration event web site to show how events can become more social.  I setup new accounts for the event at Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Facebook has their Fanbox tool that easily allows you to build a widget or badge to showcase your Facebook page on your web site.

Twitter has their profile widget that quickly puts your Twitter stream on your web site.

LinkedIn just has their promote your profile buttons.

Facebook and Twitter gives you ready to go tools for building an advanced widget that extends your profile beyond their network and onto your web site.  LinkedIn just gives you buttons?  They need to step up with some better tools.

UPDATE: Ok…guess I didn’t look hard enough.  They have a selection of widgets at - http://developer.linkedin.com/community/widgets

Personal Budgets

Just came across a cool web application called Bundle that lets you  see how people like you save and spend their money?

You can use Bundle to compare yourself by age, location, income and household status.

I love the tools out there that help us understand our money and spending.

Asking the right question…

Keep hearing discussion discussion on my social networks about whether or not global warming or global climate change is real.

Does it matter?

Isn’t the right question: Are humans negatively impacting our environment and are there things we could do differently?

Use Google Apps as Hard Drive

Over the next few weeks Google is rolling out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online.

Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications, you’ll be able to backup large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud.

Now instead of carrying a USB drive, you can now use Google Docs as a more convenient option for accessing your files on different computers.

Google is taking a big step to be at the center of everyone’s online office.

Update (02-07-2010):  I started using Gladinet to map a network drive to my Google and Google Apps accounts.  It allows you to quicly access on your Google Accounts.  I stopped running my backup on my office folders and just centralizing them on my personal and business Google Docs

Google I/O 2010 Open for Registration

We launched registration for Google I/O this morning.

The third annual developer conference will be at Moscone West in San Francisco on May 19-20, 2010

You can register for Google I/O here.

Checkout the schedule, sessions, and more at:  http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/

The event was a blast last year with the Android Phone giveaway and the Google Wave Announcement during the keynote.

OpenSecrets Open Data

I love data.  When I find great sources of data I have to record it.

Here is RAW and API data from the Federal Government.

OpenSecrets Open Data

It has:

• Campaign Finance – PAC and individual contributions to, and expenditures by, Candidates, PACs and Party Committees
• Lobbying – Clients, registrants (generally lobbying firms), lobbyists and bills lobbied
• 527s Data – Committees, Receipts and Expenditures
• Personal Finances – Agreements, Assets and Liabilities, Outside Compensation and Income, Honoraria and Gifts, Positions, Transactions, Travel
• Resource tables such as Category Codes, Expense Codes, Members of Congress, etc

Good stuff.   I will start working through this data.

Where Does My Money Go?

I found a much more colorful visual of where government spending goes.   It is in the UK, but still very cool.

They did a much better job visually displaying the data then I did on my Oregon or California State Budgets.

Where Does My Money Go?

Pretty cool visualizations of Government spending.  I predict much more to come in 2010.

SDK for Google Android 2.1

Google released the SDK for Google Android 2.1 today.   I need to play with the new release.

Google Fusion Tables and Data 2.0

I pulled this from the Google Research Blog.  I was going to write my own, but they said it all.  I just modified a little:

Database systems are notorious for being hard to use. It is even more difficult to integrate data from multiple sources and collaborate on large data sets with people outside your organization. Without an easy way to offer all the collaborators access to the same server, data sets get copied, emailed and ftp’d–resulting in multiple versions that get out of sync very quickly.

Google Fusion Tables is  an experimental system for data management in the cloud. It draws on the expertise of folks within Google Research who have been studying collaboration, data integration, and user requirements from a variety of domains. Fusion Tables is not a traditional database system focusing on complicated SQL queries and transaction processing. Instead, the focus is on fusing data management and collaboration: merging multiple data sources, discussion of the data, querying, visualization, and Web publishing. We plan to iteratively add new features to the systems as we get feedback from users.

You can upload tabular data sets .  Rright now, they are supporting up to 100 MB per data set, 250 MB of data per user and you can share them with your collaborators or with the world. You can choose to share all of your data with your collaborators, or keep parts of it hidden. You can even share different portions of your data with different collaborators.

When you edit the data in place, your collaborators always get the latest version. The attribution feature means your data will get credit for its contribution to any data set built with it. And yes, you can export your data back out of the cloud as CSV files.

You can filter and aggregate the data, and you can visualize it on Google Maps or with other visualizations from the Google Visualization API. You can then embed these visualizations in other properties on the Web (e.g., blogs and discussion groups) by simply pasting some HTML code.

The power of data is truly harnessed when you combine data from multiple sources.  Fusion Tables enables you to fuse multiple sets of data when they are about the same entities. In database speak, we call this a join on a primary key but the data originates from multiple independent sources.

But Fusion Tables doesn’t require you and your collaborators to stop there. What if you don’t agree on all of the values? Or need to understand the assumptions behind the data better? Fusion Tables enables you to discuss data at different granularity levels — you can discuss individual rows or columns or even individual cells. If a collaborator with edit permission changes data during the discussion, viewers will see the change as part of the discussion trail.

I don’t know about you guys but I think Fusion Tables is a game changer.  It will democratize the company database that us IT guys have made complex and hidden from others.

Many organizations actually run off series of departmental, program and other spreadsheets.   Google Fusion Tables is a great way to bring this all on the web securely and increase company access to data.   While putting the data in the hands of the people who truly own it.

URL:  http://tables.googlelabs.com/public/tour/tour1.html

Open Source Government Data Marketplace

Someone needs to create an open source version of data.gov.

Every  city, county and state municipalities need a copy.  There needs to be a well written, secure and standards based open source version available.

It would be setup identical with:

• RAW Data Catalog with XML, CSV, KML, etc data files
• Tool Catalog or Marketplace
• GeoData Catalog

It would also give all the links to integrate and share data with other government entities.

It would have an FAQ, Share Tools, Blog , etc.

It wouldn’t be that difficult to develope.  Would just need the right specifications and team behind it to make sure it is written securely.

Social Budgets and Contributions

Many projects I do in my spare time are purely for the exercise and learning experience.  I have been developing a tool I am calling social budgets.

I am very political, but I get frustrated when I don’t fully understand what is going on at a state and federal level.    I like to have a deep understanding before I take action or even open my mouth.

So I wanted to understand where the State of Oregon is spending their money and create a way I can voice my opinion on my priorities.

So I created an Oregon Social Budget site.  The next day I saw California released their budget,  so I wanted to evaluate their budget and created a California Social Budget site.

What did I learn?

• I learned about the ways that Oregon and California track their budget.
• How they spend and prioritize these budgets.
• I learned that even though governments are using the word “transparency”, they don’t actually make it any easier to get at the data.
• I learned about new agencies and commissions that operate at the state level.

It has been fun so far.  I am pushing my knowledge of government operations and building a cool little social tool.

I want to keep working on the tool and evolve it, so I am looking into other potential uses.

• Federal Budget Priorities
• Congressional and Senator Contribution Tool

Any other ideas?  We’ll see how much time I have.

Visualizing a Ubiquitous Oriented Architecture

I was just playing around with a new visio diagram to help me keep evolving a Ubiquitous Oriented Architecture.

(Click to Enlarge)

Video in the Cloud

I was looking for an open source image gallery solution for a friend the other night.  Tonight after reading The Coming Tornado: Cloud in the Enterprise.  I got into researching a couple of other areas of open source or cloud tools that I can add to my IT cloud stack.

I came across Panda, an open source video sharing application.     I was going to install Plogger, the image gallery tool I found the other night, on an Amazon EC2 instance and make an AMI out of it.  So I could share it with the community and offer a cloud based image gallery tool.

So tonight when I started to look for an open source video solution I thought I would create an Amazon AMI from this too.  However the ingenious folks building Panda have already seen the future.  Very nice.

Anyways, Panda is a great addition to my IT cloud stack  in the SaaS category.

Google Charts

I wanted to reintroduce everyone to Google Charts.  If you haven’t heard about it, it is a quick and easy way to create chart from data sources.

It is so easy to use.  I think it is a tool that more people need to hear about and understand how they can easily use to embed charts in web pages, word documents, pdfs, spreadsheets and much more.

To create a chart, all you do is pass your data and labels for the data using a URL or web site address:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World

The Google Chart API then returns a .png image representation of your data.

You can choose the chart type and size as well as dynamically pass your data to be presented in the chart or graph.

I am finding new uses for it everyday to quickly add visuals to blogs, web sites and emails that I do daily.  Visuals go a long way.

California State Budget

I came across a blog post in the Huffington Post called, “Schwarzenegger Proposes Budget For ‘Tough Times‘”.    So I went and checked out the California Proposed Budget for 2010 and 2011.

I am seeing a lot of PDF documents available regarding the budget, but no data feeds or spreadsheets.

I went ahead and plugged the California Budget into the budget priority tool I have been building.

You view the California Budget Prioritization Tool i built and register for your own account.

The hardest part about plugging these budgets into the prioritization tool is getting the budget data normalized.  Everything else is smooth.

Oregon State Budget

I was doing my taxes the other day.  I thought to myself.  Where does all my tax money go. 

For quite a while I thought how nice it would be to be able to tell the government how to spend my money.  I would like a multiple choice form showing how I want it spent.

Everyone told me it would not happen in my life time.  I think it will.  We have to start somewhere.

I am seeing transparency occuring in governement at all levels, and seeing social tools used more and more in Government.

I started playing with a tool that would allow me to publish the Oregon State Budget and then dictate how important each expenditure area is to me personally.

I wanted to to tell Oregon how to spend my tax money.  We’ll see.

I can see this applied to any Federal, State, Country or any entities budget for that matter.  I have Oregon’s budget published,  maybe I will do the Federal government next.

Oregon State Budget: http://oregonbudget.laneworks.net/

It is still a work in progress.

Browser Usage

I just realized a funny thing. I use 3 different browsers on a daily basis now.

I use Firefox for my personal sites and web applications.
I use Chrome for my work sites and web applications.
I use IE 8 for watching movies, TV and Media.

I generally have work and personal in separate browsers so I can logged into both Google accounts at the same time.

Then I use IE for media just because if it freezes up and crashes it leaves my work and personal browsers alone.

Funny realization.

CSS Portal

I was looking for some nice CSS styling for text and memo boxes tonight.  I stumbled across CSS Portal.

They have some great information to improve your CSS skils.  I found some greate CSS text boxes, CSS memo boxes, and CSS buttons.

There is a lot more.  Recommend checking it out.  Great quick CSS reference

Open Source Image Gallery

I am trying to find to find an appropriate solution for a friend that will allow him to manage a photo collection.    Rather than build something from scratch I thought I’d take a look to see whats out there.

I came across Plogger, a great open-source web photo gallery.

It is an excellent example of quality FREE / Open Source software that has a single purpose and lives up to it.

I just quickly downloaded and installed it at a subdomain.  I was able to login and manage it quickly, simlilar to Wordpress.

I would like to play with some cloud enhancements to it:

• Allow easy install on an Amazon EC2 instance as a SaaS tool.
• Image storage on Amazon S3
• Flickr Integration
• Picasa Integration
• Flash Image Upload

Just some thoughts as I am playing with it.  More to come as I learn more about it.

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