Many of the features, & statistic tracking from Politwitter is now available to help track & analyze how the Canadian government is using social media and how citizens are interacting with it.

Back in 2009 after launching Politwitter.ca I thought about creating sub-sites for local government, newsmedia & government. In 2009 I started creating newstweets.ca but soon realised there was not much interest. I created local.politwitter.ca to start collecting municipal twitter data, but also realised I didn’t have the time to maintain a database of all the municipalities in Canada. Keeping Politwitter going with federal & provincial politics is already a big undertaking.

I started on a Government site but with federal & provincial elections on the go I was focused on Politwitter.ca. Well in March 2012 a new site zegov.ca created a directory of Government Twitter & Facebook accounts so it reminded & prompted me to finish the Politwitter GOV site. Keeping a directory of Governments social media is manageable, the numbers aren’t huge. But as with the main Politwitter site the directory can be updated by anyone.

Politwitter not only lists government Twitter & Facebook accounts but also includes Youtube, Flickr & indexing of photos & links. Politwitter also aggregates all of this government social media data for permanent archival and analysis, with features & tools people have loved on the Politwitter political side.

Politwitter allows sorting, filtering, searching and statistics of the Government social media. More statistics will become available once more data is collected.

I don’t mean to step on Zegov’s toes, but I’ve had this on the backburner for 2 years and already had all the infrastructure built for Politwitter. Using the Politwiter platform gives much more functionality than exists on the Zegov website. I’ve also seen several projects like these popup over the years that fizzle out or aren’t maintained. Politwitter has a proven track record which media, politicians and government already rely on. I can also share data between the government & political sites for deeper analysis going forward.

I’m always open to working with others or having people help develop Politwitter, but for the most part no one takes me up on that offer and it’s been a solo undertaking. Of course if you’re not a web developer you can always help by keeping the directory updated, telling others about Politwitter or donating.

If you have any suggestions for the new Government Politwitter let me know! If you see a government twitter account missing you can add it here.

gov.politwitter.ca

The core functionality of Trailforks is a database for mountain biking trails. Trailforks is a crowd-sourced community site and users can help populate and keep the database updated. The data & features for each trail is tailed specifically for mountain biking. There is a high focus on getting GPS data for every trail & maps are a big part of the site. Each trail page has a map and GPS data and each riding area has a Google Earth 3D map with all the trails plotted on it dynamically. Just upload a GPS track of a single trail and all the rest is handled automatically. (Example the Mount Fromme Page)

The site has loads of other features like photos, videos, skill parks, news, business directory, local products, events, forums, bike profiles, riding routes, route challenges, group ride planning & more. But one feature I really want to promote is “Trail Reports”. A Trail Report is a quick entry posted by users indicating the status of a trail and describing any problems or things needing attention on a trail. A trail report can also be a log of work done on a trail and “trail days”. I hope that local riding associations and trail maintainers might start using this tool. Most pages on the site offer RSS feeds and I can create custom widgets for associations so they can display trail status and reports on their own sites. I also have a REST API that accepts and outputs data in XML, JSON or Serialized PHP.

To help encourage people to build the database users earn points for all the content they contribute and credit is given to the user. The site also has points & gaming style achievements that users can unlock by helping contribute content or just by using the site. For example one of the achievements is “Ridden 100 Trails” earned by marking 100 trails as “ridden”.

Trailforks now also integrates with my “Ridelog” Facebook App.

I tried Postbox & Opera mail and didn’t like either, I then tried Thunderbird again. I’ve tried it several times over the years and it never stuck. But now since I use an Android phone I’ve been using Google Contacts & Calendar more and more over the Outlook built-in options. I still use Outlook contacts & calendar but use a program called gSyncit to sync changes.

The thing that sets Thunderbird apart is its healthy ecosystem of  “addons”. There are addons to use Google Contacts & Calendar within Thunderbird. I also find the IMAP much faster and the search and filtering is faster and contains some nice features.

I will try using Thunderbird for a week as my main email client and see if it sticks. One thing I miss already is the ability to right click an email “find related messages” which Outlook has.

Here are the addons I’m using

• Lightning
• Provider for Google Calendar
• Thunderbird Conversations
• Google Contacts

I’ve spent a lot of time the last 3 days pimping out my XBMC Eden setup and organizing my movies and tv shows so they 100% identify and have all the poster, banner, logo and fanart images.

I’m pretty happy with XBMC its very customizable, but I do miss some of the features and apps Boxee had.

I made a video demo’ing my XBMC setup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eepxM3K3tc

Here is a pic of my TV setup, my HTPC is a horizontal case under my receiver.