Alex Reid

Check out this very cool demo of Word Lens, an iPhone Video Translation App specifically for Spanish to English and vice versa.

I’m very excited by this advance in video recognition software, or rather what it is, optical word recognition.

It replaces word for word, assuming the font is normal (it won’t read handwriting) and don’t expect any literary translations.

It’s not perfect as Geek Mom shows, but it’s still very promising. It may come in handy next time I’m in California.

Manitoba’s Consumer Protection Office has launched a public consultation on consumer cellphone contracts following Quebec’s introduction of their own legislation on cell phones in June 2010 (Ontario is currently considering similar legislation).

Consultation questions include equipment replacement, early termination of service, customer support and disclosure issues (PDF link). Email your thoughts to consumers@gov.mb.ca before the deadline of January 17, 2011.

The legislation in Quebec – the only so far in Canada – calls for information being displayed in a clear and detailed manner such as the requirement of using a “minimum font size for fine print in the contract.” Much of their legislation is good for consumers, requiring phone providers to be clear on contract agreements, written notice before contract renewal/expiry and addresses the long standing issue of phones breaking before the contract does.

Here is a great article differentiating between the terms “Open Data” and “Publicly available data” which should be addressed in the coming discussions about transparency.

(A)n increasing number of people are using the term open data to mean publicly available data … this “open data” initiative focuses on what data is made available, when open data is really about how data is made available.

The concept of “Open Data” is about format and protocol, and not the limits of any content. In light of the latest WikiLeaks drama, this part should be repeated:

Whether data should be made publicly available is where privacy concerns come into play. Once it has been determined that government data should be made public, then it should be done so in an open format.

To launch their new Twitter account, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) decided to ‘tweet’ the details of regular calls for 24 hours to show the public what they do in an average day.

This follows what the Greater Manchester Police Department similarly did two months ago in the UK, however VPD’s plan didn’t go exactly as promised. The VPD promised to tweet each and every call for 24 hours, adding they usually get an average of 500 calls per day.

In reality, 103 tweets were posted in a 14-hour stretch from 8am to 10pm by a lone “social media officer”, and perhaps a third of them were tips or Twitter replies, smartly reminding the public that Twitter won’t replace the 911 telephone function.

I hate to rain on their parade, because this is really a good thing!

More Police departments should be conversing with people and disclosing this kind of information (granted, leave out the names and numbers). Great idea, but it could have been executed better. They should have had two or three people in there, for this ‘special’ day.

If you’re going to say you’re going to do something for 24 hours, have the staff available to do so, and if you say you’re going to tweet each and every call, posting only 70 such calls in a 14 hour period does not look impressive for a 1700-strong organization.

I complain about this only because if the number of reports were closer to what a real day is like in a city like Vancouver, open data geeks would have something to play with. Otherwise, an average day in Vancouver appears pretty tame.