This Week in Texas: March 26, 2014

Posted March 26, 2014 in The Mignon Memo

Are you interested in watching a Texas House or Senate committee hearing?   Significant upgrades have recently been made to the online broadcasts of legislative activities in Texas. Under the improvements to video feeds accessible from the Texas Legislature Online webpage, an unlimited number of viewers will be able to see a higher-quality video feed of Texas House and Senate floor activity, committee meetings and other events at the Texas Capitol. In previous legislative sessions, software limitations allowed only 2,500 viewers at a time. The new video service allows unlimited viewership. In addition, videos will be encoded in H.264 format, allowing the public to access feeds from mobile devices.  

Only in Austin: Austin B-cycle is a local non-profit organization managing the bike share system on behalf of the City of Austin. They launched in December of 2013 with 11 stations and now operate 40 stations throughout the city.  Austin’s B-Cycle set a single-day U.S. record on March 14 during the South by Southwest festival. The system recorded 2,774 checkouts for an average of 10.1 checkouts per bike on that day. During the 10-day festival, B-cycle had 17,724 bike checkouts and tracked users riding 22,744 miles. The system saw an average of 6.1 checkouts per bike per day over the 10-day period.  Check one out next time you are in town.