Azavea wins social impact award for DistrictBuilder [LINKS]

Can apps and social media work as planning tools? [PlanPhilly] PlanPhilly chats with Clint Randall of the City Planning Commission about citizen survey tool Textizen. Randall talks about how the Code for America fellows set up Textizen to make it super easy for him to use even once the fellows leave. CFA fellow Michelle Lee has said she did this on purpose to make it easier for the tool to scale.

Says Randall: “We’ve worked out the kinks and gotten [the fellows] to make last minute changes, so now we have that in place, it’s a very simple computer program where we just type in the questions and it generates a phone number. Then all we have to do is revise the posters. After that, the answers are compiled by the program, it reviews words that come up most often, that kind of thing; and it sorts by zip code and neighborhood, produces charts and bar graphs, and even can publish those answers in real time.”

Azavea’s DistrictBuilder Wins ‘Data Used for Social Impact’ Award at Strata Data Innovation Awards 2012 [press release] Read our previous coverage on Azavea’s DistrictBuilder tool here.

Interesting Office Opening At Old Bargain Bazaar Location [Passyunk Post] “Further down the line, [Daniel Bogen would] also like to set up a nonprofit ‘social entrepreneurship venture.’ That essentially means he’ll help other assisting-technology designers bring their products to market.”

$6 Million Treehouse Scholarship for Students Worldwide [Treehouse blog] If you’re a student who wants to learn how to code, apply for two free years of Treehouse.

QBE Signs Multiyear Renewal and Expansion Agreement with Acrometis for Workers’ Compensation Managed Care Platform [press release] News from the Malvern, Pa.-based claims processing platform.