Technology Blog

From eWeek.com:

Next month, in a move designed to reduce the time involved in issuing building permits and inspections from days to minutes, building inspectors in Cleveland will begin filing inspection reports wirelessly from the field…

Because municipal Wi-Fi access is not ubiquitous and because inspectors are often in places such as elevator shafts and basements where signals are not available, agencies will be setting up “watering holes,” or hot spots, where inspectors can get connectivity. Cleveland’s infrastructure already offers free hot spots downtown and around Case Western Reserve University…

Accela Wireless uses a store-and-forward technology in which the home server periodically polls the client for new information. This allows municipalities that do not have ubiquitous wireless coverage to use a hot-spot model in which the data is forwarded when the client device enters a coverage area or logs in through a private hot-spot provider.

The application includes an offline mode that uses a store-and-forward approach, allowing inspectors to record information that is automatically updated when they enter the range of a wireless node. The software is designed to make the process of applying and issuing permits, scheduling and enforcing inspections, and signing off on projects more efficient.

Does anyone else see a problem with this, like maybe the cost of using private hotspot providers? Or maybe lack of coverage by any hotspot provider? It’s not very practical if the inspector have to drive back to the office to file.

The other thing that bothers me about this story is, where’s the administration? Don’t we have a Tech Czar here in Cleveland? Why isn’t he speaking to the press about this? Oh, that’s right, he’s busy.

This post was written by George, source: Wireless in July?

From the Hawken Blog:

I noticed the color out of the corner out of my eye first. It said “expensive”, but maybe not enough to hold my interest. A second later I heard the sound of a bull market – the unmistakable, turbine like growl of a new $317,000 Italian-made 12 cylinder engine. Now I was rapt at attention.

The Lamborghini downshifted as it approached the toll plaza. The driver skillfully glided into the appropriate lane (ez – pass) and shot straight through it like a bullet. From my perch high above in my Jeep, I nodded happily and thought, “Nice, The American Dream is still alive”, in the background Bloomberg chattered mechanically, reeling off the Dow, S&P and the yield on the 10 year note.

A week later I visited Cleveland and my mood soured considerably. As Hunter S. would say – this is where the American Dream died. To be fair, it died long ago, what remained was a diaphanous vision projected with a dim bulb onto the mindscreens of the masses by various politicians, union reps and hucksters. Reach out and try to grab their vision – your hand clutches thin air and an employment check.

My visit to Cleveland served to crystallize my thoughts on the state of affairs in the economy and, more importantly, what steps are required to fix the lethargy that has fallen on this great nation.

Great nation? You ask? – War, slavery, exploitation? What’s so great? Certainly there are problems, flaws, inequalities. But, we have the capability to fix these things and achieve a society where people are free to pursue what they like.

But “free to pursue what they like” is merely a pleasant thought in Cleveland…

I’m conflicted on this piece, and ask you, gentle BFD readers, to click through and share your reactions. Thank you.

This post was written by George, source: Fear and Loathing in Cleveland [part 1]

Visit Planning Livable Communities, download the PDF and send it to your favorite civic leaders:

The Local Government Commisison has posted a 6-page brochure, downloadable as a free PDF, on Neighborhood-Scale Planning Tools to Create Active, Livable Communities. The ideas:

* Mixed-use development, letting people walk or bike to more destinations
* Design, that balances the need for traffic flow with the need to create “environments that are comfortable, friendly and pedestrian-oriented”
* Traffic calming, so that high-speed traffic isn’t whizzing through your main residential/commercial business district (Framingham’s already got that one covered well downtown!)

and so on…

This post was written by George, source: Making Northeast Ohio livable

Women make up more than 1/2 of the population but sometimes it seems that the Internet has ignored this fact.

Or the sheer enormity of the Internet does not make it easy to find information, resources and items of interest for women in the Cleveland area.

Not anymore! ClevelandWomen.Com is geared toward providing information, resources and fun to the female population of Northeast Ohio - and those who care about them. In fact, we hope that the men in your life will visit and maybe learn what makes you tick…

This post was written by George, source: ClevelandWomen.com

Another Civic Strategies E-Letter highlights another problem:

some local officials think the bums at the bank need to make more foreclosures — and make them faster.

Reason: The older suburbs are worried that, if a house or two on a street falls into disrepair or is abandoned by a family who can’t keep up the mortgage payments, it can drag down the entire block. Houses that sit empty too long, officials say, attract vandals and arsonists. Cities can help keep up appearances by cutting the grass and repairing the exterior (placing a lien on the property for repayment), but neighbors still worry that the darkened house next door will drag down property values. “Who wants to live in a neighborhood where you have these popping up all over?” one suburban mayor asked.

This is where foreclosures come in, of course. If an owner stops making mortgage payments, banks can foreclose, pay off the liens and back taxes and sell it to someone who’ll maintain the house and pay taxes. Normally, banks don’t need help in doing this, but in the Cleveland area they do. The problem is with the county courts, which are so backlogged and, lawyers say, inefficient that foreclosures can take a year or more to process. That’s a year that a house can sit empty and fall into disrepair while the paperwork sits at the courthouse.

Sounds like we need to work on the court system, not the banks.

This post was written by George, source: Otis White on foreclosures in Cleveland

Thinking about Shannon Okey’s post, Will writes:

I’ve been shopping at the West Side Market for decades. I know scores of folks who work there. By first name. Known ‘em for years. They’ve known me for years. They know what I eat, what I cook, how I cook. We’ve celebrated tears of joy with new jobs and tears of sorrow with unemployment. We trade recipes. I help with their computer problems. We talk sports. We talk food. We talk politics. We talk life.

The recipe for surviving Wal*Mart is to provide something they don’t: in the Market’s situation, that would be exactly what I just wrote, just add in a little dynamite Dormunder Gold bratwurst, or a little Slovenian Sausage (or Hungarian – either works for me – well, any kind of sausage works for me, actually), a fresh strudel or a batch of Ohio City Pasta, with this type of custom service, and they should survive…

… maybe…

No doubt, some of the folks down there will get hurt – and badly – with a Wal*Mart just two miles away. I fear for them – and for one of my old traditions. I fear for the residents of Tremont and Ohio City who gladly walk to the West Side Market to shop. A time-honored tradition might come to a close.

Time-honored? You bet. Almost a century now.

But that’s Cleveland: a city that has no idea where it’s going because it has no idea where it’s been – it’s too busy burying its past rather than embracing it. You must know where you’ve been in order to know where you’re going…

One of the great things about CollisionBend.com is the sense of Cleveland’s history Will brings. Make sure you click through and read his example of the city leadership’s short sightedness.

This post was written by George, source: Will Kessel worries about the West Side Market

Cool Cleveland’s creator Thomas Mulready highlights events. Here’s the MP3.

This post was written by George, source: Cool Cleveland Podcast

Another one from Frank Mills:

Cleveland reminds me of a mom & pop company going belly up. Instead of thinking long-term survival, mom & pop sell the soul of their store for desperate stopgap measures. What will it take to get Cleveland – her politicians & business leaders – to think long-term survival?

Please click through and leave a comment for Frank.

This post was written by George, source: What will it take?

MBM writes:

Yesterday morning two adult males came into the school lobby and robbed one of the senoir boys. They were armed with guns, took the boys shoes and some other belongings (from what I heard) and immediately left the building. We haven’t been told whether or not the police have arrested anyone, or even have any leads.
Before this week, I never felt unsafe here at school. There were always plenty of security guards and a police mini-station in the building. The crisis in school funding has forced the eliminaton of most of the security staff. Word on the street is we are easy pickins now…walk right in.

When will our officials pay attention? When will the community demand safe environments for our children? The community should be outraged, yet this incident didn’t even merit a mention in the news. The media was too busy gushing over the new plans to rebuild the Flats entertainment district.
Brand new condominiums, stores and restaurants will replace the old bars and night clubs.

Indeed. Where the fuck are they?

This post was written by George, source: MaryBeth Matthews: “Where are our priorities?”

Tim Russo posts that Mayor Jane is still trying to get in bed with WalMart, despite councilman Joe Cimperman’s protests.

Anyone ready to take action on this yet?

I am.

This post was written by George, source: Back like a bad penny

Christine Borne picks up the thread on racial relations:

I worked at the Shaker Heights Public Library for two years. I grew up on the West Side, and because of our bizarre fractiousness, I knew absolutely nothing about Shaker Heights (beyond the fact that it was there) until I was 24 and started working there.

Within a week I had made the vague but crystal clear determination that there were “weird energies” at play in Shaker Heights, and its immediate environs. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cleveland, or for those Clevelanders who haven’t ventured west of the Cuyahoga River, there seems to be more black/white tension on the East Side - where Shaker Heights is located - than the West Side, perhaps for the simple reason that there are more black people on the East Side).

Oh, God. Where do I go from here? The white community thinks, would “you people” just get over it, already? The black community thinks, white folks are still holding us down. Who’s right? The best answer I can give is that nobody’s right, because when you get down to it, there is no such thing as the white community or the black community, only individual white people and black people, with individual wounds that are either discussed or denied. And mostly, I haven’t seen much discussion, just a lot of walking on what I consider unnecessary eggshells of our own construction. In two years at the Shaker Heights Library, racism was never discussed openly, not once. We never had a staff meeting about what to do when the race card got played (by black, white, or whatever kind of people), there was little acknowledgement on behalf of the administration that the public service staff often worked in a minefield of racial incidents waiting to happen…

What’s your experience?

This post was written by George, source: Another story of race in Cleveland

Michael Leaphart writes:

Famed rapper and New York Knicks fan Chuck D, ripping the national media for urging James to leave the Cavs and play in a major market like New York or Los Angeles: “The media is so full of [stuff] that it can’t understand why he would want to play in Cleveland. He’s from there. His family is there. It’s his home. Why would he want to leave?”

first, his manager’s last name is leaphart. second, he supports music file swapping. now, he’s taking up for cleveland keeping lebron james. i’m going to go download a PE track right now…and pay for it.

Me too [firing up iTunes].

This post was written by George, source: Chuck D on LeBron James

From this week’s issue of Cool Cleveland, comentary by Phil Metres:

5). Not the Shish Tawook sandwich I bought for a panhandler at the Falafel Cafe on Euclid Avenue, but the panhandler’s sudden tears, as we sat at the shared table. This, after spending the morning examining the exploded base of Rodin’s “Thinker” on the porch of the Cleveland Museum of Art — destroyed by an anonymous bomber in 1970, and never arrested…

This post was written by George, source: 13 ways of looking at Cleveland

Love this quip from Christine:

[E]veryone thinks New York is the greatest city ever, and that “Cleveland will never be New York,” but remember this: New York smells awful, and even those of us with the healthiest breathing apparatus possible still get phlegmy and congested with too much traipsing around Midtown, and that those pathetic little fenced in patches of grass on the curb do not a green space make.

This post was written by George, source: Christien Borne on NYC v. Cleveland

I haven’t brought it up in a while, but for BFD readers who don’t know Civic Strategies “is a strategic planning firm that structures public policy solutions for cities and regions.” Every month Otis White sends out a newsletter. When he mentions Cleveland, more often then not the stories paint a dim picture of our city. Like this one regarding Plain Dealer reporters visiting Cleveland schools.

Hello? People around the country receive this newsletter. Doesn’t anyone monitor this stuff besides me? Isn’t there a PR person for the school district? Or is that why MaryBeth Matthews blogs? I think we need some better “media relations” then press releases about basketball scholarships. Not that those aren’t important, but I think we’ve got some serious perception issues here…

This post was written by George, source: Another Civic Strategies, another Cleveland mention

John Ettorre let me know that BFD is listed with his blog by Northern Ohio Live Magazine.

So “Pour yourself a satisfying cup of Blog”. Thanks, NOL.

This post was written by George, source: A fun place to visit

I think Cleveland should have its convention center in Youngstown or Toledo. Couldn’t they do a JEDD? Maybe we can put the casinos there too…

This post was written by George, source: More on the convention center

He asks “What’s going to be the biggest issue in the 2005 Cleveland Mayor’s race that nobody’s talking about… yet?”

Go there and add your $.02

This post was written by George, source: Bill Callahan wants your comments

“Whenever we think things can’t get any worse for these kids, WHAM!! We take another hit. I am afraid to imagine where all this is going.” - MB Matthews, Cleveland Municipal School District teacher

This post was written by George, source: 1900 less teachers

Tim Russo’s got the story that the Campbell Administration doesn’t want you to hear.

Sure, they’re a great source of revenue, but they keep the police OFF the streets, which causes quality-of-life crimes to go up.

This post was written by George, source: Democracy Guy on traffic cameras