Building Things

I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project.  The front page of our website reads: “TOPP is a catalyst.  We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy.”  While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to… Cont...

For an upcoming project at TOPP, we’re talking about setting up an optional scope contract [PDF] — where we specify the time, cost and quality, but leave the actual scope of work open.  This approach has many advantages, which I’ll just quote from Beck & Cleal’s document: Customers can change their ...

For a little side project, I’m using jPlayer, a nice jQuery-based audio player.   I wanted to skin the buttons a to suit my project, and while jPlayer does support jQuery ThemeRoller skins, I liked the basic look and feel of the standard jPlayer controls.  So, I just traced the default sprites in Il...

If you use Melkjug as a Fluid app, like I do, then you’ll love this: (Melkjug fluid icon) Continue reading

A few weeks ago, I created a small web app for scheduling project teams at TOPP Labs.  At any given time, we’ve got anywhere between 10 and 20 active projects, so keeping track of it all is difficult, and planning ahead requires a good clear overview of everything that’s happening. Why create someth...

Hot off the presses: Backpack TOC Greasemonkey script. Continue reading

I spent most of this morning looking back through old posts about the Chandler Project and OSAF.  I’ve thought about this a lot, due to the many parallels with my work at The Open Planning Project.  For newcomers, those parallels are: Massive funding from a visionary with a dream (in OSAF’s case, Mi...

For a recent personal project (I won’t say which since that would defeat the purpose), I was in need of a new kind of authentication. My wife and I wanted to create a website where we could post photos and news for our family and friends, while keeping that information off of the broader intertubes....

Even though I shouldn’t own a car, I do, and as every car owner in NYC knows, dealing with alternate-side parking is a hassle. That, combined with my recent itch to write a small mobile app, has lead me to the following idea:  the “Dude, Where’s My Car?” app for mobile.   Here’s what it will… Contin...

For your reading pleasure, the Broadsheet Wide theme for the Vienna RSS reader. Continue reading

This week, we launched the new, improved GothamSchools.  GothamSchools is the latest media / advocacy initiative from The Open Planning Project, and our first foray into the world of education.  We’ve got a great team of reporters in Philissa Cramer, Elizabeth Green, and Kelly Vaughan, and the new s...

For a while now, I’ve been using Chandler to keep track of my to-dos.  Chandler is a semi-historic open source project which I’ve been following ever since I read Dreaming in Code (and in many ways, it’s saga parallels ours at The Open Planning Project with our work on OpenPlans)  I’ve been rooting ...

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… Continue ...

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 ...

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… Continue reading

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,...

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,… Continue r...

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… Con...

For the past several months, my coworkers and I over at The Open Planning Project have been hard at work on an important redesign and new product launch. I’m now excited to say that the final launch is, ahem, days away.  Streetsblog and StreetFilms have been hugely popular since they launched two ye...

(ok, I obviously need to work on less cheesy headlines, but for the moment…) On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of accompanying TOPP’s latest hire, Kim Wiley-Schwartz, on a pilot session for her new Livable Streets curriculum.  She’s developing an education program around Livable Streets that’s debuti...