Dec 10
In the next six minutes $1k in revenue will be generated from photo radar cameras in AZ. And another $1k six minutes after that. Now picture the for-profit entity that just snapped your photo reaching into your wallet, extracting $165 and giving a chunk of it to the State of Arizona. I haven’t verified these facts independently but I’ve read five different articles this evening that indicate there are over 200 Redflex photo radar cameras in operation in Phoenix Metro now. Governor Napolitano signed a law into effect this summer enabling the state-wide use of photo radar enforcement and if you drive in Phoenix you know that the situation is out of hand. Here’s why:
A. A for-profit Australian company (Redflex – RDF) has been essentially granted the ability to levy a tax against Arizonans and split the profits with the State. Last time I heard you needed to be a government entity to have the right tax a population.
B. You paid for the installation of these cameras with your tax dollars. Doesn’t it stand to reason that the penalties exacted on you from these “safety” devices would flow back into your municipality? They don’t (at least not the majority) – they’re flowing to a publicly-traded Australian corporation.
C. The most insidious thing about this whole sham is that the people who are collecting the tax get to do so under the guise of enforcing a safety measure. I call B.S. Camp out by a photo radar van or a fixed camera and watch as the flashes as they occur every few seconds. You’ll see an inevitable cascade of brake lights for half the cars on the road- 1/2 of the traffic instinctively slams the brakes for fear of getting flashed and the other half continues at their existing speed. That is a recipe for one thing, and it’s not safety.
What you can do right this minute
1. Sign up on Camera Fraud Meetup and get involved.
2. Print out the signature pages for the initiative and referendum and await instructions.
3. Tell 10 friends who are as pissed off about this situation as you are about 1 & 2.
I pulled a stunt with my license plate a year ago because I was so disgusted by photo radar. They should just make the highways toll roads and be straight up about the motivation here. It’s projected that they’ll cover $90MM of a $165MM budget shortfall this year via the new highway photo radar “scameras.” How many accidents will occur during that time from the erratic braking of surprised motorists- and who will pay for those accidents? At the very least if we must live with photo radar, the for-profit entity that implements the cameras should not share in the recurring revenue generated by the cameras. As it stands now Redflex is incentivized to maximize the frequency and amounts of fines and lobby for measures that bolster the use of photo radar.
Are you aware Redflex and its competitor American Traffic Solutions are both beginning to employ active OCR technology to track the movement of your vehicle about the city? Again, it’s done under the guise of “homeland security” and “amber alert response effectiveness” but a byproduct is that they conveniently get to interpolate your speed between cameras and issue tickets based on that calculation. Oh and your movements over time are logged and kept indefinitely (“limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed”). How long until they successfully pass a bill that gives them the right to have an ACH draw on your bank account to extract the speeding fine immediately?
This is out of hand folks. Photo radar is not something you need to quietly accept. Get angry. Get dangerous. Let’s stop this nonsense.
Oct 22
Friday night it was merely an idea. By Sunday night it was a prototype. And by Tuesday afternoon it was on the homepage of TechCrunch. How did we do it with Reserve Chute?
This was a perfect storm where an old idea whose time had come collided with a group of capable, motivated people with the right skills in the right environment punctuated with just the right amount of Zoolander.
People using SaaS applications love the convenience but face the possibility of losing access to their data -whether it be caused by the company going out of business overnight, hard drives and backups failing or simply by their internet connection being interrupted. Users want the peace of mind knowing that they have a local copy of their data and they want a brain-dead-simple way to achieve this for all their online applications. The tool we created this weekend offers this capability and makes it possible for any contributor to add extend the system and add hooks to make it work with new services.
While the demo we showed on Sunday night is not publicly available yet, our small but stalwart group is already plotting a series of Wednesday night hack sessions at Gangplank to advance the project to a shippable first version targeted for release sometime around the Holidays. For now, if you use any web-based services and want to be able to automatically store a unified, local copy of your data across all your applications, sign up for the beta and be among the first to try out Reserve Chute!
Other noteworthy projects that sprang to life this weekend:
Twitteratr
MyShelterHelper
And on another note, if you’re in Phoenix this evening come out to my talk on startup lessons at the Club eFactory in north Phoenix.
P.S. And yes that is a Karate Kid Cobra Kai t-shirt I’m wearing.
Sweep the LEG!
Oct 03
Startup Weekend will be in Phoenix two weeks from tonight. This is a 2.5 day affair where strangers of different disciplines come together to build and launch a real product in a weekend. I attended the one in San Francisco back in November and wrote up some thoughts on that event. If you’ve considered starting your own business or just want a chance to meet and work with smart local people to build something real, you will not want to miss this.
The event starts at 6pm on Friday the 17th and will be held at the new Gangplank office at 325 E Elliot Road Suite 34 (SE Corner Elliot/Arizona Avenue). Tickets are $40 and cover food and overhead for the event. You can get them online here and see product ideas that have been proposed so far here.
Sep 15
I was lucky to be one of the people who got to speak at the first ever Ignite Phoenix a month ago. The night was a complete blast with 16 presenters each doing a 5min talk on something they’re passionate about. Topics ranged from OCD, to pinhole photography to firewalking to geese in a public library. I talked about music, education, becoming your own teacher and how to accelerate breakthroughs. Huge props to Jeff Moriarty and Roger Williams for pulling off a fantastic event and Clintus McGintus for filming and producing all the videos from the night. You can watch my talk below and you can catch all the other ones here on blip.tv. And if you’re interested in presenting at the next one, they’re now recruiting speakers for that one on Oct 28th.
Jun 19
Let’s do lunch. A group of us are meeting at noon today the Tavern on Mill. All the details can be found at www.TempeNerds.com. This will be the second techie lunch like this that we’ve done. We had about 25 people at the first one (pics here) and this one should be even better. The goal is to get more connected locally and be aware of what others are working on so we can help share advice, make introductions, etc to elevate the scene. We also have two local technology reporters who will be there today so a nice byproduct of coming will be the opportunity to get in front of people who can potentially write a story on what you’re doing. Email me if you have questions and RSVP on the site so we have an accurate head count.
May 28
Code Camp is here again. You won’t want to miss this free event if you’re a coder in Phoenix Metro.
WHAT: a single day event with ~50 sessions covering various programming languages and language-agnostic techniques for people that write software
WHERE: University of Advancing Technology at 2625 W. Baseline Road in Tempe
WHEN: all day Saturday, May 31st 9am-6pm
HOW: there is no cost to attend and they provide food – come a bring a friend. You’ll want to sign up for their sessions online though as most sessions appear to be over half-full at this point
WHY: it’s the single most condensed day of info you’ll get on coding tactics in Phx this year. Sessions are given by local experts and you’ll meet a ton of fellow coders from diverse groups and styles.
WHO: anyone who writes code or wants to learn.
JumpBox is fortunate to be one of the three sponsors at this year’s event. Last year’s was fun. I’m doing a talk this year on using virtual appliances to setup instant dev infrastructure based on popular open source server applications. In 15min you can have the major building blocks you need in place for a software project. Come nerd out with us this saturday!
