Technology
Chapel Hill is missing an excellent opportunity to deploy up to a hundred Internet hotspots along our transit corridors. Last week, the town signed a contract with NextBus, Inc. to provide, at a cost of $949,030, digital signs at 14 bus stops to inform riders of expected bus ETAs. NextBus, unlike competitors Motorola and Cityspace, uses last-gen cell technology over next-gen WiFi-MESH.
Instead of purchasing an open standards system utilizing WiFi/WiMAX wireless technology - technology allowing Chapel Hill to provide ubiquitous communication services to police, fire, public works and the general public from as many as 100 bus stops along the 26 bus transit routes - the town's transit department recently endorsed NextBus' proprietary cellphone-based bus-tracking system.
Specifically, NextBus is providing 14 digital signs, tracking of 83 vehicles and web-reporting on 26 routes for $949,030.
This week I launched a new website called Chapel Hill Wireless. The sites first goal is to help people find public wireless hotspots. It uses a Google Map to plot markers where you can find wireless. I hacked together a bit of javascript using the Google Maps API to make it work. This site will cover the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina.
I've included wireless provided by municipalities and businesses. As long as the wireless is available to everyone for free or a nominal fee - like a cup of coffee or a sandwich. (I didn't include the wireless on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill because its not open to the general public.)
If you've used one of the hotspots on the map WRITE A REVIEW. Here's how:
1) Register on the Chapel Hill Wireless website
2) Login
3) Write a review in a blog post
4) Send me an email. Tell me you've written a post.
I have been so incredibly upset since I heard about the Chapel Hill Town Council's swift decision to retire the Technology Advisory Board and the Horace Williams Citizens Committee last week, that I couldn't even write about it. I have been waiting to cool down, but the more I think and the more people I talk to about it, the madder I get.
So I will let Jason Baker do the talking for me (from his blog):
Last week, the Chapel Hill Town Council opted to end the service of both the Horace Williams citizens' committee and the technology committee.
Doing so was a mistake. With her sole dissenting vote, apparently only former citizens' committee member Laurin Easthom saw the value of the hard work and diversity of perspectives those folks would bring to the town in the years to come.
As a town, we're far behind where we ought to be in the technology realm, and disbanding our technology committee without a thoughtful replacement is only going to put us farther back.
I was pretty shocked to read today that Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy has written a memo to the Town Council proposing that they should end the Horace Williams Citizen's Committee (old web site, new web site). Just a few months ago, I helped to draft a plan for how the HWCC would proceed in the next year or two to study some of the issues surrounding Carolina North and to make recommendations on them to the Town Council.
In all of the discussion of Ken Broun's new committee to advise UNC's leaders, it has always been made clear that the HWCC would still exist to advise Chapel Hill's leaders. I have not seen any change in situation that would mean we don't need this service any longer. This decision would be a major reversal and it deserves more explanation than the Mayor has given.
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