A nice list for reference (via @aldenwoodrow).

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, we 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.

Currently available for New York, San Francisco and Pittsburgh, Livehoods is one of the more interesting uses of social media for analyzing the character of cities and their neighborhoods.

Interesting visualization that would be fun to see for any city. Density might be an alternate, albeit less trippy, way of seeing usage.

This is one of those titles that doesn't tell the whole story. Actually, it tells only a tiny portion of the story. But, that portion is worth thinking about.

A perspective view of driving the major roads in Boston in 1958, via Kevin Lynch and MIT's video vault.

Note: There is a slowed-down (private) version on Facebook, which is how I found the version on the MIT vault. The Facebook version also includes a Morphine cameo starting at the 2 minute mark.

My fascination with mapping continues.

A very cool visualization. I always hear about density as the ultimate creator of energy efficiency. It would be interesting to map the city view against suburban office parks and neighborhoods to see what the differences are in efficiency.

I think this might be a dream job for me.

“We don’t want just an active hacker community that’s developing apps that aren’t really going to benefit the community. Things need to come back and either enhance citizen engagement, enhance citizen awareness, improve digital inclusion.”

Your house keys become an overview for your home. Energy consumed, current cost of energy per day, broadband allowance used and simple weather. It also serves as the screen that displays any scheduled alerts or important information relating to other items on the shelf. The bins need to be emptied and Mr Cuddles, the household pet is out and there’s something wrong with the fridge.

My head is spinning with how cool this would be both inside and outside the home. It also seems more tied into the way people already interact with their environments than Nokia's vision.

Good.is asked its community to nominate the most awesome, best-tasting, sustainably brewed, independently owned, community-oriented craft beer brewed in your state, and then we made our own map, showing the breweries with the most nominations. The result is a beer education for that that think these are the best options.

H/T to Fred for the find.

Nice visual that brings in distance, cost and overall number of commuters by city.

The MBTA has joined New York City's MTA as part of Underground Signs' inventory. Underground Signs is selling replicas of signs in all 270 MBTA stations. For a brand that's hurting, it's an opportunity for the MBTA to get some positive perception out there about their service and build on some of the ridership gains they've seen in the last year.

Who will be the first U.S. city to have something this awesome? I'm betting it's not Dallas.