From: philipashlock

Subject: microsyntax

Date: Jun 17, 2009 04:34 PM

Yeah, this is certainly relevant. I haven't really looked into how this 
could be applied with the Open 311 API in D.C. <http://api.dc.gov/>, but 
I did briefly look into this (in the form of picoformats 
<http://microformats.org/wiki/picoformats>) when we were considering the 
syntax for subject lines in email submissions on GeoTrac 
<http://geotrac.demo.topplabs.org/wiki/about>.

I didn't see much of a standard convention to adopt, so for now all that 
we're doing is:

    issue summary @ geolocatable address

Where "geolocatable address" is anything that Google's geocoder can 
provide a lat-long for.  Since this is actually an email, we use the 
body of the email for a full description and attached image files for 
the issue image.

SeeClickFix uses url shorteners for their twitter support 
<http://seeclickfix.com/twitter>. Addresses are extracted from urls 
pointing to a google maps permalink and images are handled in a similar 
fashion:

    @seeclickfix there is graffiti http://bit.ly/RzTp2
    http://twitpic.com/fjdkadk


Surprisingly, it doesn't look like San Francisco's 311 twitter support 
<http://www.sfgov.org/site/sf311_index.asp?id=104503#Complete_Messages> 
has really any convention at all:

    eg: d sf311 Queen mattress and two bags of trash on sidewalk at 1355
    Market.



For a seamless way of getting accurate location, we figured it'd be a 
good idea to attempt to extract geocoded metadata on uploaded photos (or 
via MMS or url shortened pointers to images) as this is something newer 
smartphones (eg iphone) are beginning to support as well as some new 
digital cameras.

I think some kind of holding ground or stub model might be required to 
really support useful SMS submissions for a 311 service. Submissions for 
issues in NYC or with DC's API require the user to specify the problem 
domain (eg Service Request Types) with high granularity before actually 
submitting the issue. With shortform submissions knowing those 
predefined problem domains ahead of time is not possible, so I think the 
submissions could first just come through as a stub. The stub could be 
assigned to the correct service request type and more details could be 
added to the entry either by another person or at a later date. A 
"holding ground" like this might be helpful to prevent the city's actual 
311 service from getting flooded with near-useless submissions.

On a somewhat related note, I was just complaining about mobile phones' 
widespread lack of support for using SMS to transfer an address book 
entry.  I'm not sure that I've seen a picoformat equivalent of an hcard 
or any attempt to standardize something like that.  Lots of phones 
support bluetooth transfers of vcards, but they're usually so cumbersome 
that manual entry is quicker and easier.  You have to be next to the 
person with bluetooth anyway. Maybe this is the closest mention of it: 
http://pigsonthewing.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/suggested-method-of-publishing-microformats-in-twitter-posts/

The subject of microsyntax definitely has a lot of value within the 
field of 311 services, so I hope the effort develops fruitfully.

Phil


Chris Messina wrote:
> I'll just throw this out there, but I wonder if there's any interest 
> or relation to the recently launched microsyntax.org 
> <http://microsyntax.org> project (to which I am advisor)? Basically if 
> you're trying to develop any kind of syntax for SMS or text-channels, 
> that effort might be a good place to work on spec'ing out or exploring 
> different syntax options...
>
> Otherwise, I'm not familiar enough with the realm of the 311 API 
> discussions to offer much help... can you point me to the existing API 
> resources (if such exist)?
>
> Thanks!

-- 

Philip Ashlock
The Open Planning Project -- http://theopenplanningproject.org
phil@... <mailto:phil@...> (917) 388-9046

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Thread Outline:

• Re: microsyntax — Ben Berkowitz

From: Ben Berkowitz

Subject: Re: microsyntax

Date: Jun 19, 2009 02:23 PM

Hey Guys,
SeeClickFix has posted our first crack at an open API for government service
requests.
See the blog post here:
http://seeclickfix.blogspot.com/2009/06/last-week-we-blogged-on-growing-need.html

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