An Economist special report on a “retail renaissance” in international banking makes the case that an upheaval is coming, driven by technological changes, that will shake up the banking industry. The Internet and mobile phones are turning boring old retail banking into an exciting industry. Continue reading…

Nextdoor is a private, neighborhood-based social network, currently available in the US. Registered neighbors can use Nextdoor to: Continue reading…

Crowdsourcing began as a legitimate tool to leverage the wisdom of the crowds to solve complex business and scientific challenges. Unfortunately, these very same techniques are increasingly being adopted by the criminal underground for nefarious purposes. Continue reading…

A research project called Livehoods, from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, aims to shed some light on how people really inhabit their cities—and how this changes over time—by mapping data collected from 18 million Foursquare check-ins. Continue reading…

Livehoods offer a new way to conceptualize the dynamics, structure, and character of a city by analyzing the social media its residents generate. By looking at people’s checkin patterns at places across the city, the researchers create a mapping of the different dynamic areas that comprise it. Each Livehood tells a different story of the people and places that shape it. Continue reading…

In the future, cities will be judged by their generativity.  The globally mobile entrepreneur will decide where to invest capital and where to live will depend on a city’s ability to be generative, i.e. create Continue reading…

The Internet of Things can empower bottom-up community building, and it’s already here Continue reading…

A. Townsend, Research Director at the Institute for the Future, talked in yesterday’s WOBI video about top-down and bottom-up smart city solutions. Continue reading…

The idea of the city-as-platform was raised by Chicago City CTO, John Tolva, in an excellent review of Chicago’s open data projects, and starts with the provision of an open application programming interface (API) to the city’s data portal. Continue reading…

Part of the 2011 TEDxPhilly lectures on “The City”, Youngjin Yoo, Director of the Center for Design+Innovation at Temple University discusses urban information architecture systems. Continue reading…