The Last Few Weeks in WTF, June 2015

Since I got behind on my regular series here, consider this make-up work.

– Behold my steed: Old-school tech meets 21st-century bicycles with Trotify, a wooden device that makes your bicycle sound like a galloping horse (h/t Danielle).

Yes, this totally sounds like something someone thought of while high, but then actually got around to building while sober. Kudos for that, I suppose.

– Was there also show & tell?: You might not expect parents to be asked to attend a parent-teacher conference at their adult children’s places of work, but you’d be wrong if your kid works at one particular startup in New York City (h/t Jen). Continue reading

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Austin and Its Bicycles

Here’s an interesting project that creates maps showing various aspects of city life:

The Social Computing Group at MIT is compiling data for maps that demonstrate the impact that small independent coffee shops can have on life in the big city.

The interactive maps are part of the “You Are Here” project, which creates data visualizations to serve as tools for urban planning at the micro level.

The io9 article shows a map of areas with walkable coffee shops, and I had hoped to see something similar for Austin. We’re not exactly a walkable city, though, are we?

So far, the only map available for Austin shows (you guessed it) bicycle crashes:

Screen Shot 2014-04-23 at 8.54.17 AM

Uh, yay us?

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