International icebreaker
I am not even twelve hours into the Italy trip and it is clear that the iPhone may be the surprise social lubricant of the journey. People are unabashed about asking about it, wanting to hold it, play with it. And I am of course obliging.
The great thing is that being wowed by the iPhone has nothing to do with language. It is visual and tactile and immediate. An Italian at O’Hare and an Indian in Milan (where I am now) were flicking through my kids’ photos in no time flat. A great conversation-starter.
For what it’s worth, the phone works great over here and EDGE isn’t too bad either.
Hi, I’m John Tolva!
I'm co-founder of CityFi, a strategic urban consultancy.This is all my other stuff.
Here's a little bit about me and how to get in touch.
Views From The Tank
Button Coral
(Cynarina lacrymalis)
Speaking
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Colorado Smart Cities Symposium
Closing Keynote
Denver, CO
September 18, 2018 -
American Planning Association Colorado State Conference
Cities As Platforms: Towards a State-Wide Living Laboratory
Keystone, CO
October 4, 2018
Marginalia
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Clever Chrome game lets you perform (or mock) Rick Deckard's computer sleuthing in Blade Runner. Enhance 224 to 176.
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Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made By A 13 Year-Old In 1996
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Hard to see how this will scale, though it is the right idea.
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8 years after the demise of the Shuttle program we're going back up on our own livery.
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Rectilinear building layouts algorithmically redesigned to optimize for X. Very biological.
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Create polar histograms of any region (cities are most interesting) to see its overall orientation.
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This could work.
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No splashing!
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Listening more closely to the things and events that affect coral reefs.
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The Tembé tribe is using cell phones and machine learning to detect the sound of chainsaws.