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A few exciting technology-related items have come over the transom in the past couple of days.
First, courtesy of Streetsblog Network member Living Car-Free in Big D, news of Walkshed, a prototype web application to measure walkability. Building on the concept embodied by the popular Walk Score app — which allows users to see what amenities are close to any given address — Walkshed goes to the next level. Rather than measuring “as the crow flies” distances, it factors in the presence of sidewalks, highways and other variables when calculating the pedestrian accessibility of things like grocery stores, movie theaters and other services.
It also allows users to customize their preferred amenities. For some people, being close to a day care facility is a priority. For others, it’s nightclubs. Walkshed lets you tailor the program’s preferences.
The creation of Aaron Ogle (@atogle), Walkshed is so far only available only in a beta version for the city of Philadelphia, but the possibilities are exciting.
In another welcome web-based development, Google announced yesterday on its Lat Long Blog that the availability of new data means that bike directions are forthcoming (date unspecified) from Google Maps (h/t to TOPP‘s own @philipashlock).
And finally, SeeClickFix — which enables citizens to report everything from potholes to unheated apartments to their local governments — has just launched the capability for 25,000 more towns around the country to use the service. You can find out more about how SeeClickFix works here.
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