Timeline: the history of MoreQuality

I'm always talking about: context, context, context.  Information needs context.  Time is a basic context that is often lost, so I've been curious as to how timelines can add a temporal sense, which may hopefully translate to the ability to detect momentum and a higher resolution understanding of a given topic.  I put a few events on a timeline depicting the history of MoreQuality over time.  A work in progress.

Extra Context

When reading a newspaper, if I like the article, I often find myself asking, what happened before?  Where does this story fit in the larger context?  Over time? 

I'd love to see entity matching done in Articles.

It could happen like this:
  1. Feed the URL of the Article into a Service
  2. Get the entire Article and HTML
  3. Extract and Store It (Try OpenCalais as an Entity matcher, or SuperFastMatch)
  4. Return the HTML, plain text, along with Metadata
Metadata:
  • Person Profiles
  • Agency Profiles
  • Body Profiles
  • Issue Profiles

News from Supervisor Linda Seifert - December, 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Supervisor Linda Seifert <solanonews@supervisorseifert.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 5:00 PM
Subject: News from Supervisor Linda Seifert - December, 2011


December, 2011
Solano County SealSeifert eNews
Linda J. Seifert
District 2 Solano County Supervisor
 
In This Issue
Second Annual Holiday Dessert Open House
Quick Links

Join Our Mailing List

Thanks for reading our eNews!  We welcome your feedback.  Share your concerns and questions by email or call the office:

Fairfield Office (9-5, Mon-Fri)
Phone: (707) 784-3031
Fax: (707) 784-6665
675 Texas Street, Suite 6500
Fairfield, CA 94533-6352

Benicia Open Office Hours (1st & 3rd Mon., 5-6:30pm)
Benicia City Hall, Conf.Rm 1
250 East L Street, Benicia

Email Linda
ljseifert@solanocounty.com

District Representative
Catherine M. Ritch
Phone: (707) 784-2974
Hours: Wednesday, 1 to 5pm, Thursday - Friday, 9 to 5pm
cmritch@solanocounty.com

District Representative
Belinda T. Smith

Phone: (707) 784-2974
Hours: Monday - Tuesday, 9 to 5, Wednesday, 9am to 1pm.
btsmith@solanocounty.com

 

December, 2011
Solano County SealSeifert eNews

Linda J. Seifert
District 2 Solano County Supervisor
 

 

As we begin the 2011 holiday season, the District 2 staff wishes each and every one of you a very happy holiday season.  We each know how fortunate we are--we have loving family, good health, the warmth and comfort of our own home, a full table and the ability to look forward to next year and beyond. 

 

We wish the same for all of you as this year comes to a close.  The challenges we have faced as a country, a county and as individuals have been considerable as the economy has continued to do few of us any favors.  I hope that even for a short time during the holidays, we can embrace our similarities and set aside our differences.  The joys of the season can fuel all our spirits and do it best if we do it together.

 

Roddy and I hope you will join us as we open our home to all of you to celebrate the season again this year.  We hope to outdo our very successful Dessert Holiday Party of last year by repeating the event and once again collecting toys and pajamas for children less fortunate than we are.  Please bring one of those items with you if you would.  As described in the invitation below, our house will be open for the festivities on Sunday, December 11 from 3 PM to 5 PM at the address below.  RSVP if you can--but if you forget that step--please come by anyway.  Donation slips will be available and items will be given to the Cordelia Fire Department for distribution throughout Solano County.  We look forward to personally welcoming you to our home and the chance to wish you a Very Happy Holiday.

 

And may 2012 be a very good year!  My best to you all,

 

Linda

 

border 1 

 

Supervisor Linda Seifert

Roddy Feldman

and the District 2 Staff

Cordially Invite You to Our

 

Second Annual Holiday Dessert

Open House 

 

Sunday December 11

3:00-5:00 p.m.

 

4254 Green Acres Court, Fairfiled 94534 

 

Please bring an unwrapped toy or children's pajamas for the Cordelia Fire Department Toy Drive.

 

Please RSVP to Cathy at (707) 803-3485

 

 

 

 

Why The U.S. Credit Rating Was Downgraded

This states it in simple terms. 

. U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
. Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
. New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
. National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
. Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:
 
. Annual family income: $21,700
. Money the family spent: $38,200
. New debt on the credit card: $16,500
. Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
. Total budget cuts: $385

Dataset: California Local Government Compensation Reports

While browsing the California State Controller's website, I found a notice that while compensation data is available, it is not available online, rather, it is available if they send it to you.  Not ideal, but certainly better than nothing.  After sending an email on the website, a compact disc arrived after communicating with Ken Press (disc image will be available [can't find it at the moment]).

The file has the following text descriptions on it:

  • City, County, and Special Districts Data, as of July 11, 2011.
  • File Types: Excel 2007 (.xlsx) and Comma Separated Value (.csv)

I appreciate that Ken readily assisted me and the data arrived relatively quickly.  However, it seems to make more sense to publish this data on an ongoing basis.

If this data were available, updated on a weekly basis, the following things would become possible in the public domain due to the effort to make public data available:

  • changesets of positions
  • staffing across agency
  • staffing within agencies
  • salaries across agencies
  • salaries within agencies.

The source file is available here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1186808/CityCountySD2011-07-11.csv.  If you'd like it in another format, please let me know.

fwd:

I received this in a forwarded email.


1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by
legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
 
2. What one person receives without working for,
another person must work for without receiving.
 
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that
the government does not first take from somebody else.
 
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
 
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not
have to work because the other half is going to take care
of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it
does no good to work, because somebody else is going
to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the
end of any nation.