Normally when we bid a construction project, we don't address in the bid documents the payment of sales tax. We do, however, indicate that the contractor is required to follow all Federal, State, and Local laws. Because of this, I would assume that on most projects, a contractor would be paying any required sales tax…
Category: Civil Engineering
Modeling a City
Pegasus Global Holdings is planning to build a full-scale city somewhere in New Mexico "to test and evaluate technologies in conditions that most closely simulate real-world applications." According to the project's website, CITE-CITY, the company proposed building the model to overcome challenges related to access, long waits, and costs that they faced in carrying out…
Virtual Worlds Ramp up Civic Engagement
After launching a community planning effort in the virtual world of Second Life, I’ve begun to experience a few things I don’t think many of us in government would have thought possible. Like probably many of you working in government and planning, I’ve been amazed that so few people really get involved in a…
Kinect, Robotics, Highway Safety, and Saving Lives
There's been a lot of talk about the use of Kinect and robotics. Yes, people have figured out how to use Microsoft's awesome gadget to manipulate robots. And Microsoft even has a Robotics website and development toolkits for this purpose. But so far, most of the demos I have seen focus on using robots…
Publishing GIS Data to a Google Map Using Fusion Tables
At work we've been focusing a lot on development of web maps. We have an ESRI ArcGIS Server so we've been trying out the JavaScript, Flex, and Silverlight options available. But we've also been exploring the mapping/GIS opportunities offered by Google. This week, I needed to create an embeddable map that I could easily generate…
SL9B and Community Planning
This month, the community in Second Life celebrates its 9th birthday, otherwise known as SL9B. This seems to be the first year that the celebration is not sponsored or hosted by Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. Instead, this year, Linden Lab announced the theme of the birthday would be community and that the…
Home Buying Tips and Cheat Sheet
Buying a home is probably one of the biggest purchases we will make in our lives. It's also something that many of us end up living with for an extensive period of time. In my lifetime, I have been involved in the purchase of five homes, but the tips I am going to share with…
The Time for a Comprehensive Plan for Second Life is Now!?
Today I read a great article about digital citizenship, Digital Citizenship and the Forward Edge Transference, written by Mike Langlois, LICSW. In his post, Langlois discusses many similarities between online and offline behavior. This was interesting to me because as a local government employee, I've also recognized many similarities between offline communities and online spaces. But my…
What is Government’s Role in Community Events?
Once again I've been intrigued by the similarities between online and offline communities with the topic this time focusing on the handling of community events. And I wonder how much the "real" and "virtual" communities can learn from each other. If you work for a city, your experience is probably very similar to mine –…
Public Works Puzzles
Lately I've been working on developing some educational coursework related to the public works field. Through this effort I've come across some interesting online tools that can be used for educational purposes. One of these tools, Jigzone, takes a photo and turns it into a jigsaw puzzle. As an example, I've started with one of…