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AnyWare is a project I've been working on closely for a while at PlaceMatters. It is a web-based tool to brainstorm and evaluate ideas both in real time and over periods of time by large groups of people. It is a definite work in progress, but we are ready to begin letting a certain set of users play with the tools and help us build something better. We developed this tool to help scale up the level of participation that could happen during a planning process. However, it could be just as useful to a Fortune 500 company, a neighborhood association, or an advocacy group.
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I've been following the Sunlight Foundation for a little bit now and they are currently doing some great work around government and transparency. There has been a much larger, if not perfect, commitment to transparency under the Obama administration. For one example, go to http://www.recovery.gov to see where all the Recovery Act money is going.
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Today, Keith Stuart at the Guardian, wrote an article on How the 3D engine is changing the world. He points out that gaming engines and technologies are starting to make their way into other fields and describes the complexity of building games. Planning is one of the fields that is beginning to benefit from the industry that brought us Doom and Quake.
