Hatfield here I come!

I have accepted a position in West Vancouver with Hatfield Consultants (www.hatfieldgroup.com) which I will start the beginning of October. Hatfield is a fairly small environmental consultancy that does works both domestically and internationally (they have offices in West Vancouver, Fort McMurray, Indonesia, Chile and Thailand).

I will be doing web and database design, client liason, client training, and a bunch more. As an example of the work that Hatfield does, they just received a CIDA contract in Indonesia with the title "Strengthening good governance in Aceh through improved environmental management and spatial planning".

Port Moody will be posting my position very soon, and I probably will be involved with the selection of the new person.

Geocoding Canadian Addresses

Looks like there's finally a Canadian equivalent to www.geocoder.us - www.geocode.ca!

Now all I need to do is create my own cool zooming map of Port Moody with my own cool JavaScript viewer (so that I don't have to worry about Google Maps' Terms which allow for advertisements). Of course drawing circles and overlaying information on Google Maps looks very promising.

It looks like someone has been able to overlay their own tiles onto Google Maps - so that you can use Google's interface to show your own graphics. This same technique is used for a subway map of NYC. Too cool.

More: a tutorial on making your own google map type, and even a photoshop script to make all the tiles.

The updating map of where the trains are *right now* in Dublin is really cool.

Port Moody RSS Feeds

We have just launched RSS Feeds for the City of Port Moody's website.

Let's see how people end up using these!

note: my blog uses a javascript conversion of this RSS for the sidebar.

Smart Choices in the News

Smart Choices is in the news again.

From the Tri-City News:

• Deficit forced society's hand in sale of citysoup
  Facing an operating deficiency of $1 million, the Smart Choices Society had no choice but to find a buyer, the society's chair said this week.
• $10,000 prize in contest on citysoup website
  Four months after selling off its citysoup.ca product line to a private company, the taxpayer-funded Smart Choices Society of B.C. has a new constitution, a new board and a new consulting business.
  

Displaying an RSS Feed in your sidebar

I've found a very cool service that allows you to display an RSS feed on your website. For example, you can add a feed to your side bar. The best part of this is that no advertisements are currently inserted - giving you a clean looking page.

This service is hosted here, but they would like you to use one of their mirrors.

Smart Choices

Looks like Smart Choices has redesigned their website. Unfortunately it doesn't look very good in Firefox (it works fine in IE).

Smart Choices will be having their AGM tomorrow at the Innovation Centre which I will be attending.

Boutique site vs Portal

I'm having a philisophical discussion about what is better for an organization: a collection of small boutique websites, or a larger "portal" website. For example, should each event that an organization hosts have its own website, or should it be just under one corporate umbrella?

In the end, I think that it is all personal choice, mainly based on the controlling nature of the organization. If more centralizaed control is desired, then the single umbrella site is probably appropriate, while if less centralized control is desired the boutique site works.

Port Moody Blogs

There are several blogs that I have found pertaining to Port Moody:

• Port Moody Station Museum blog
• Tri-Cities Political Report (Onion Version)
  
• Tri-Cities Political Report

The political report (onion version) is particularily good.