Future Use Construction Site
Visitors, FutureUse.org is revamping.  Crane operators and ground excavators are toiling the site. In the meantime, visit the old Future Use and read up… http://futureuse.blogspot.com/
Cross Posts
Future Use recently posted a couple writings on the ripsnorting history-hitchhike web journal THE CHISELER: The Racket BusterJust before WWII, Special Prosecutor John Harlan Amen led the largest investigation of city corruption in U.S. history. His target was Brooklyn. From Broadway to BombayMarty Reisman (1930-2012) was a table tennis champ and man-about-town. He hustled ping-pong…
A List of Hurricane Sandy Resources
Information can come in as handy as a roof and warm clothes. Below is an ongoing, overdue and incomplete list of resources on Hurricane Sandy: RELIEF New Jersey Hurricane Sandy resources NJ mobile insurance offices in Ocean, Monmouth & Middlesex Counties New York Extension ofEmergency Unemployment Benefits Legal assistance for disaster victims New Jersey Unemployment…
The iBg Apple
Future Use was en route to the job interview, waiting for the G train, when across the tracks on the opposite platform, a young man was mugged. Three youths punched him, snatched his iPhone, and ran. “Owwwww!†cried the young man, in polo shirt, rolled jeans and flipflops. It sounded like he had just tripped…
"Hey uh – you know where I can find…"
It is Search Week in New York City, a bonanza powwow of market researchers gathering at Jacob Javits Center for the Search Marketing Expo: Market researchers all dressed up and abuzz for Search Week. The declaration was made official by the Mayor, a prime advocate of business research, the industry in which he made his…
News Research in the News
Last week news researchers were in full throttle hunting info on the identity of Sam Bacile, a/k/a Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a/k/a Erwin Salameh a/k/a Ahmed Hamdy a/k/a PJ Tobacco. Â This character made the movie which is said to have triggered the slew of deathly riots in the Arab World. Â It is a breaking…
Shakedown at the Queens County Records Room
While researching probate records at the Queens County Courthouse, I was nearly arrested by a gang of security guards. Sometimes I freelance as a proxy researcher for people out-of-town willing to pay for my crackerjack services in the hunt for genealogy information. The pursuit has taken me to numerous records rooms and archives in three…
The Unlimited MetroCard
A turn-of-the-century cartoon from Brooklyn Life, a local high society publication, which jibes the use of municipal space as a map of product placement: Brooklyn Life, Brooklyn Historical Society. Wonder what the blue pills are for… In July, the Metropolitan Transit Authority launched a plan to put commercial advertising on the face of MetroCards. The…
Spybrary
Brooklyn Historical Society Library. After all, the movies are about a guy tracking his past.
Points of Interest in the Meadowlands
The Center for Land Use Interpretation “is a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface.” The Center is based in Los Angeles – a place which some say does not exist.  The Center veers the fjords within the fjords of information science, gag art…
The Hot Wire on Transparency
“An Email Ain’t a Record?†Governor Andrew Cuomo was under the gun to explain his administration’s policy of failing to save digital correspondence. Office emails are routinely deleted and Cuomo communicates with his staff strictly using “Blackberry to Blackberry†messaging, which like the private files of J. Edgar Hoover are destroyed by protocol. The Huffington…