[okfn-discuss] Timekeeper Map of Recent US City/County Bankruptcies

Wed Oct 23 15:26:47 UTC 2013

I made some further additions to the map, which you can see at
http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/rufuspollock/us-city-bankruptcies#1.

Timekeeper is a very nice, free tool for visualizing a series of geographic
and temporally diverse events.  

For the US municipal bankruptcy page, it would be nice to add links to the
court filings. Each of these cases was litigated in a US bankruptcy court.
The court docket provides links to voluminous filings which include
substantial detail about the filer, and its reasons for making a bankruptcy
petition.

Unfortunately, US bankruptcy courts don't make filings freely available -
users must pay to see the docket, decisions and written arguments even when
the filer is a public entity. Various workarounds to this limitation have
been developed.  One particularly worthy idea is RecapTheLaw
<https://www.recapthelaw.org/> .  This Chrome and Firefox add-on
automatically uploads filings from a user's browser to the Internet Archive
<https://archive.org/>  whenever (s)he pays for a filing. Thus, by virtue of
one user paying to see the filing, all other RecapTheLaw users can get it
for free.

You can see RecapTheLaw data for the 2008 bankruptcy of Vallejo, California
- case number 2:08-bk-26813 Eastern District of California - at
http://archive.recapthelaw.org/caeb/300283/

Marc Joffe

Public Sector Credit Solutions

http://www.publicsectorcredit.org/ca

From: okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Rufus Pollock
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 4:47 PM
To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list
Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] [ANN] TimeMapper - Create Elegant TimeMaps from
Google Spreadsheets in seconds

Thanks Marc and updated.

If you have additional items you can jump in directly and add to spreadsheet
at:
https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aon3JiuouxLUdDQ3QlJh
OHJnS2x0NkxibUp1YnYwR1E
<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aon3JiuouxLUdDQ3QlJ
hOHJnS2x0NkxibUp1YnYwR1E&usp=drive_web#gid=0> &usp=drive_web#gid=0

On 15 October 2013 00:21, Marc Joffe <marc at publicsectorcredit.org
<mailto:marc at publicsectorcredit.org> > wrote:

Rufus

This is a very nice interface and I especially like the US municipal
bankruptcy example.

Since you include Jefferson County with the bankrupt cities, you may also
wish to add Boise County, Idaho for completeness.  Please see
http://boiseguardian.com/2011/03/02/boise-county-bankruptcy-is-historic/. I
would be happy to make the addition if you're willing to permit me to alter
your sample.

Marc

From: okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
<mailto:okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org>
[mailto:okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
<mailto:okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org> ] On Behalf Of Rufus Pollock
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 2:43 PM
To: Gene Shackman; Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list
Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] [ANN] TimeMapper - Create Elegant TimeMaps from
Google Spreadsheets in seconds

On Monday, 14 October 2013, Gene Shackman wrote:

Looks nice, but why do you have to sign up using a twitter account? And why
google spreadsheets? What if you don't have an account with either of those?
For future applications can you design it so you don't need twitter or
google?

Twitter: happy to have another sign in mechanism but want something quick
and convenient for most people that involved them already having reserved a
unique username. Specifically we wanted to avoid being responsible, at this
point, for doing the whole signup process (storing passwords, doing password
recovery, handling spam accounts etc)

Re google spreadsheets: its the best simple tabular data backend and one
that very large number of people use. JSON and straight up CSV could easily
be supported but they are more complex and are more complex for non-techhies
to use (e.g. can't just be any CSV would need to be one CORS accessible
etc).

Rufus

Gene 

  _____  

From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org <mailto:rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
>
To: okfn-discuss <okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
<mailto:okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org> > 
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 3:34 AM
Subject: [okfn-discuss] [ANN] TimeMapper - Create Elegant TimeMaps from
Google Spreadsheets in seconds

Hi All,

TimeMapper <http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/>  is a new web app from Open
Knowledge Foundation Labs <http://okfnlabs.org/>  that lets you create
interactive timemaps from Google spreadsheets quickly and easily.

 <http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/> http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org

More information in this post:
<http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2013/10/11/timemapper.html>
http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2013/10/11/timemapper.html

Examples:

*	Major Battles in the Napoleonic Wars
<http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/rufuspollock/major-battles-napoleonic-wars> 
*	Medieval Philosophers
<http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/okfn/medieval-philosophers> 
*	US City Bankruptcies since the Financial Crisis
<http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/rufuspollock/us-city-bankruptcies> 
*	Archaeology of Wine
<http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/adamrabinowitz/archaeowinetimeliner> 

The site is a simple node.js app with storage into s3. The timemap viz is
pure JS built using KnightLabs excellent Timeline.js for the timeline and
Leaflet (with OSM) for the maps. For those interested in the code it can be
found here:  <https://github.com/okfn/timemapper/>
https://github.com/okfn/timemapper/ 

Regards,

Rufus

-- 

Rufus Pollock

Founder and Executive Director | skype: rufuspollock |
<https://twitter.com/rufuspollock> @rufuspollock

The  <http://okfn.org/> Open Knowledge Foundation

Empowering through Open Knowledge

 <http://okfn.org/> http://okfn.org/ |  <http://twitter.com/OKFN> @okfn |
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Rufus Pollock

Founder and Executive Director | skype: rufuspollock |
<https://twitter.com/rufuspollock> @rufuspollock

The  <http://okfn.org/> Open Knowledge Foundation

Empowering through Open Knowledge

 <http://okfn.org/> http://okfn.org/ |  <http://twitter.com/OKFN> @okfn |
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