Connecting.nyc Inc.

­New York, June 30, 2009 - ­Th­e New York City Council is considering a legislative proposal, Intro. 991, that would improve public access to “raw data” held in city databases. Yesterday, in testimony before its Technology in Government Committee, headed by Council Member Gale Brewer, Connecting.nyc Inc. urged the use of the .nyc TLD in facilitating access and management of city databases.

In essence, we urged that the city think of a database as a thing, similar to a bench, a tree, a light post, or fire hydrant. And that a .nyc domain name be assigned to each database. The great thing about giving a domain name to each database (or other “thing”) is that you can then have a conversation about that database.

For example, think about the police department’s crimes database, and let’s take Mayor Bloomberg’s lead and call it “­crimes.data.nyc.” By giving it an intuitive name - http:/ /www.crimes.data.nyc - ­you facilitate the work of ­programmers, but you also create a market place for that database. So at the crimes.data.nyc­­ URL you would find: ­

• a detailed description of the data,
• a link to download the raw data,
• an ongoing conversation of how it “might” be used if only this or that was changed or added,
• comments and possibly a discussion by people who object to it containing too much information,
• a suggestion that a particular field should require privacy access­,
• notations and links to the different apps where the data has been used, and
• a civic advocate / entrepreneur match program for locating people with similar interests and a desire to jointly develop apps based on the crimes.data.nyc ­data set.

Learn more about this and see our council testimony.  (Commons Photo courtesy of equinoxefr.)­

Learn more about the Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages. ­­­

­­­Jackson Hts., June 15, 2009 - The discussion on the development of New York City’s dotNeighborhoods will continue on June 24, 6-8 PM at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, 232 E. 11 Street. The following items are on the agenda:

• Guest Speaker (to be confirmed)
• Business Models - How neighborhood.nyc sites get started and maintained.
• The Oversight / Institutional Structure – Leadi­ng prospects for the trustee role.
• Technology - Blogs, wikis, networking…
• Inclusion – Ways to engage those involved with face-2-face and extant neighborhood blogs, with this overlay.
  

See our dotNeighborhoods wiki page for the report from this and our previous meetings.­

That’s Wednesday, June 24, 6-8 PM @ 232 East 11^th­ Street. We have 20 seats so please RSVP to tom@connectingnyc.org. (Commons Photo courtesy of sporkwrapper.)­

Learn more about the Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages. ­­­

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Jackson Hts., NY, June 10, 2009 - Earlier this week Connecting.nyc Inc. filed comments with the NTIA on the role of cities within the ICANN governance structure. We recommended opening two governance channels to facilitate cities’ participation in ICANN processes:

• Technical Participation - Through membership on the extant Registry Constituency enabling city registry operators to participate in the technical management of the DNS.
  
• Representative Participation - Through access to a new channel enabling “representation of cities within the ICANN’s executive decision level.”
  

See our On the Participation of Cities in the ICANN Processes wiki page for our NTIA comment and related information.

Learn more about the Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

­­­As a “nation of immigrants” the story about the ancestor who came to this country and changed his name is a familiar one. It wasn’t that people lost pride in their personal histories, cultures, or languages. Or that something magical happened as they passed through an American port. Many didn’t have a choice, as Anglicization was the standard practice at Ellis Island.­

These days we have become spoiled as it sometimes seems the entire world speaks English - at least on the Internet. Our tongues never get the exercise a foreign language provides. Complicated sound combinations stick in our throats. Those with difficult names have the choice to either anglicize or have their names butchered. ­To some there’s even a prestige in being like actors and authors who commonly change their names. The idea is to fit it and not be judged. I’ve never met anyone who changed his or her name and was bitter.

In the world of the Internet, names are an issue but for different reasons. A good .com is very prestigious but nowadays expensive. And names are getting longer and longer with many .com URLs the length of a sentence. Sometimes they may be easy to remember, but typing them is difficult and error prone. Those selling the sometimes shorter .org URLs want everyone to think of them as creating a better, warmer place - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLg4o5no1pM.­

But get ready New York for short, descriptive, and memorable .nyc domain names that say “Hey, I’m from New York City!” The current estimate is that they’ll arrive in late 2010 or early 2011.

­(Commons photo of  sign with long town name courtesy of diluvienne.) 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., New York, June 1, 2009 - I attended the 59th Sidney Hillman Foundation awards ceremony honoring journalists, writers, and public figures whose work fosters social and economic justice last Wednesday. It was a most exhilarating evening, with the recipients having made significant contributions to our awareness of the world around us.

Reflecting the times, Bruce Raynor, president of the Hillman Foundation and the evening’s moderator, at one point bemoaned the seeming demise of our nation’s daily newspapers and asked “How will those communities exist without the ongoing contributions of those fine journalists?”

Living with about 100,000 other residents in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City, where we’ve never known the luxury of a daily newspaper (nor a TV or radio station) focused on our problems and the opportunities before us, I can provide at least a partial answer to Mr. Raynor:

• All too often they’ll have to wait for a disaster to occur before anyone pays attention to a local problem.
  
• Local communication will be very slow and incomplete, with word of mouth assuming a more important role.
• Community memory will be short, incomplete, and inaccurate.
  
• Election processes will be ineffective as they’ll have few mechanisms for reporting on activities, issues, and assessing accountability. 
• Faith in government and the governance processes will diminish as will the quality of life.
  

With the rise of the Net and the broad demise of the traditional newspaper industry, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a printed daily in Jackson Heights or in any of our city’s other neighborhoods. Perhaps there’s the germ of a new media in our  dotNeighborhoods and Issue-Communities efforts that might enable useful citizen reporting and accountability mechanisms. But for the moment, sans a new business model, the ability of either to conjure up quality journalism remains elusive.

However, Mr. Raynor did perhaps provide one part of the answer when he announced the Sidneys “a new monthly award for an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism from a newspaper, magazine, web site, or any broadcast outlet. The award citation will come with $500 and a bottle of union-made wine.”

We’ll be scheduling another meeting on dotNeighborhoods later this month where this issue will be on the agenda. (Commons photo courtesy johncarney.) 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

­­­­­­Appland, May 9, 2009 - The jumble at right ­is a “­Word Cloud­” ­­view of this blog as of today. The size of each word indicates the frequency with which it is used. Click on the cloud for a larger view.

It should be interesting to compare periodic pictures of this type and see how our emphasis changes. 

New York City, May 1, 2009 - When I explain the benefits of the .nyc TLD, people sometimes say “domain names are old hat,” or “Google does names,” that “cell phones don’t need them,”  and “everyone’s already got one,” or even “why complicate the world with a new TLD?”

One of the images I’ve used with these recalcitrants is the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 and the impact it had by creating the Manhattan street grid. Our logo - part grid part web - evolved from this image. Sometimes I get a convert.

After scheduling an early May meeting on Neighborhood Names - e.g. Astoria.nyc - I had a gut feeling that within the promise for improved local communication that these 300+ names offered, there was the spark for a better explanation of .nyc’s potential. So I called my old friend Alex and asked him to help me detect that spark, perhaps via an analogy. Luck was on my side as Alex, who had worked for 30 years developing logistics policy for the Pentagon, drew my attention to the efficiencies the barcode brought to the supply chain and the retail world saying, “Imagine running a supermarket without the barcode.”

So why do we need .nyc? Think of the historically dreadful state of neighborhood communication - no local papers, radio, TV (albeit with a few minor exceptions). Over the past decade oodles of websites have popped up to try to fill this gap. But few provide a broad neighborhood view and the coordination tools to address grievances and opportunities, and none have an “official” identity that enables them to become local “media centers.”

With a carefully planned introduction, what .nyc provides is an avalanche or big bang effect, bringing reorganization and efficiencies like those barcodes brought to the retail world, to neighborhoods. And if we extend from this name niche to the entire .nyc name space, one might begin to see the impact of an organized digital grid.

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

­New York City, April 27, 2009 - The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) in preparation for the acquisition of the .nyc TLD (like .com and .org but just for New York City). We applaud this outreach effort and request that all members of Connecting.nyc’s community join us in assembling a comprehensive body of information to assist the city with this important policy development effort.

Over the next weeks we will gather and organize information that might aide the city’s decision making process. (Due date May 27th.) With our public interest perspective, decade-long involvement with .nyc, and the collaboration of our community, we expect that our submission will assist the city in better understanding the multitude of ways .nyc can help create a more prosperous and livable city.

We will augment our submission by including information presented on a collaborative wiki we’ve created, see RFI Workspace. The Workspace links to the abundance of information on Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki, and enables our community to help create an imaginative and innovative assemblage of ideas for the city’s consideration. We are particularly interested in ways the TLD might facilitate security and privacy. As well, we’d like to hear how .nyc can help connect New York City’s civic, social, and business communities using networking tools.

Going forward, we expect DoITT to review the various RFI submissions and, in collaboration with city agencies, business & civic organizations, and residents, to develop a road map leading to .nyc’s acquisition, development, operation, and oversight. (Image elements courtesy Google Maps.)

Learn more about our RFI Collaboration. 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

Look at what the world is saying about us.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Mexico City, March 3, 2009 - Connecting.nyc Inc. participated at a gathering of the “dotCities movement” at the 34th Meeting of ICANN, March 2 - 6, in Mexico City.

On the opening day, several dotCity developers met to discuss their goals for the week of meetings. Those attending were Kim Jaeyoun, Seoul, South Korea, Marta Téllez i Domingo, project director of .bcn (Barcelona), Oliver Sume, .HAMBURG, Werner Staub, from CORE, Dirk Krischenowski, .berlin, Amadeau Abril i Abril, initiator, .cat, and Thomas Lowenhaupt, the.nyc TLD.

Monday’s meeting focused on the role of cities within the ICANN, the entity that oversees the Internet’s domain name structure. Current thinking is that cities will express their voice at ICANN through the Registries Constituency of the GNSO. In February 2009 promoters of the .nyc, .berlin, .bcn, and .paris submitted a petition to the GNSO, a deliberative body of the ICANN, indicating their intention to form the City Top-Level Domain Constituency and participate in the ICANN governance process from within that entity.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Heights, New York, February 15, 2009 - In January 2009 Wink The Penguin, who stood on a boulder at the south end of the Elm-Jack Mall, at the intersection of 75th Street and 37th Road, vanished. Chicknapping is suspected. Wink, a 22″ high bronze statue of a penguin was installed in 1995.

City officials have been notified with inquires made of the Police, Parks, and Transportation Departments by Council Member Helen Sears. But at present his whereabouts remains a mystery. 

Fliers requesting help have been posted locally.We also call upon the Linux collaboration, with Tux the penguin its mascot, to help secure Wink’s return. We’ve long supported that free and open source software movement and call upon the global penguin community to help determine Wink’s whereabouts by monitoring online channels. Anyone with information should email it to tom@connectingnyc.org.

Follow the search for Wink. (Commons photo courtesy voteprime.) 

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

It’s a dream come true.  Anyone who has had a passion or solution to a problem lives for the day when his / her ideas are being adopted.  It’s an indescribable thrill to have those ideas be a crucial part of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s State of the City address on Feb 12, 2009!  As you can see from all the content on this website putting a city on the Internet is a big job that Tom and the staff at Connectingnyc.org have been tackling for almost a decade.  We’ve been going to civic meetings and bring the ideas we’ve culled to the technology organizations that are anxious to use their skills for the love of NYC. This is an exciting moment in technology and city history!

New York, ­­­­­February 12, 2009 - City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced today that New York City will seek the acquisition of the .nyc TLD.

Speaker Quinn said:

While we look to cut spending, we’ll keep our eyes open for any new sources of revenue. Here’s one that’s been right in front of us for years. Web sites end with dot com, dot org, dot this and dot that.

Thanks to the leadership of Council Member Gale Brewer and Deputy Mayor Bob Leiber, New York City will soon have its own place on the web – with dot NYC.

Mark Twain famously advised “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” Well now we can make more New York addresses – just on the internet! A local business won’t have to outbid a guy in Kansas to get Tony’s Pizza dot com. They’ll be able to get Tony’s Pizza dot NYC, a name associated with the greatest city – and home of the greatest pizza – in the world.

Most importantly, we expect to generate millions of dollars a year through the sale of web addresses ending in dot NYC.  ­(See the full speech here.)

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Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.­­

New York, January 28­, 2009 - ­Look for us. We’re coming to your neighborhood.  My experience at the Town Hall meeting sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer was very positive and a success for Connectingnyc.org.  Borough President Stringer is very interested in how our technology firms are working to define and solve some of the problems in our neighborhoods.  He told me to email him because we work for him.  And we in turn look forward to working with this great city, NYC.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

­­­New York, January 24, 2009 - How will the arrival of the .nyc TLD change civic communication and the governance structure in New York City? Since 1975 our official “divisioning” has been steady: 1 city, 5 boroughs, 51 council districts, and 59 community districts. To date, the Net has not had an impact. Will it? If so, how and when?

With Connecting.nyc Inc.’s .nyc initiative having evolved from Queens Community Board 3’s 2001 Internet Empowerment Resolution, thinking about the TLD’s role and impact on civic affairs has been a constant. Over the past few months, as the probability of the TLDs arrival has grown larger, we’ve begun to focus on the .nyc TLD’s impact on this now 35 year old structure.

Neighborhood domain names have always been seen as valuable civic resources, enabling those amorphous entities to better provide local identify, communication, and broker the effective sharing of local responsibilities and opportunities. We recently created a Traditional Neighborhood Names page to discuss the possibilities and ways we might allocate names such as astoria.nyc, bushwick.nyc, and greenwich-village.nyc, and how we might assure their operation in the interest of local residents.

In early November we submitted an application to the Knight Foundation outlining an entirely new civic structure, something we called Issue-Communities. Using mapping software and social networking tools, Issue-Communities will empower city residents to create narrow communities of interest - “Issue-Communities” - reflecting their concerns. These Issue-Communities can address longstanding local communications deficits and serve as organizing force to focus local concerns.

Recently we began seeing overlaps and parallels in the Traditional Neighborhoods and Issue-Communities projects, and today created a wiki page for thinking through the development of such New Civic Governance Layers. Join us.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.