Detroit 1st city in the state to let voters request absentee ballot w/ smartphone.

[brizee]

http://www.freep.com/article/2014071...sentee-ballots

Smart.

[Jimaz]

Darren Littell, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said the GOP isn’t opposed to the new technology, saying that it supports measures to increase voter turnout.? [[sic)

That's an interesting statement. It's also interesting that it was ended with both a period and a question mark. Hmm. What could that mean?

Paul Weyrich - "I don't want everybody to vote" [[Goo Goo)

[Lowell]

Coming too, I read, is ability to pay for parking spaces by smartphone. The should largely eliminate the issue of broken meters, maybe eventually the need for meters and their expensive maintenance completely.

Beth Niblock, Detroit's new and first CIO [Chief Information Officer] seems to be the right person for the job of untangling the city's broken tech infrastructure that is bleeding millions from the city and leaving its data insecure.

More than half the city's meters are broken, which made paying for parking in the middle of the polar vortex a challenge.

"I'm standing on the street blowing on my credit card, trying to make it work, and going, 'OK, I just have to take the parking ticket,' " she said, laughing.

She whips out her cellphone to show off a photo of her car very obviously not blocking a crosswalk despite the ticket she received....

She still thinks about her dream world, her Eden, she laughs, of when Detroit is a smart, connected city. One where you don't have to blow on your credit card in the cold of February, trying to force a broken parking meter to accept it.

Instead, you could find an open parking spot anywhere in the city and pay for it right from your phone.

[mwilbert]

I don't like the idea of smartphones being the only option to do things [[like pay for a parking space) but it is certainly a good idea to use them as much as possible. In all likelihood a majority of adult Detroiters have smartphones, and that percentage is only going to increase.