Innovation Incubator

I am looking forward to getting to know all of you in June. Let's get the ball rolling!

Theater of Marcellus at night.
Photo by Alexander Z. Hosted on Wikimedia Commons.

However, this moves beyond being just a great tool for exploring history. The designers have said they "want to make it part of an online journal that will publish scholarly articles documenting how ancient buildings appeared." That's a radical, but amazing, shift away from what one expects a scientific journal to look like.

But wait, there's more! Behind door number three, we discover that the program has been linked to Google Earth and the Internet at large. If you ask for information about a building in the world, a window pops up that "displays Google Earth with the exact coordinates of the virtual building and provides links to online documents about the building."

Now that is a way to fuse multiple technologies for a great purpose.

Apparently Murdoch has realized that MySpace is a sick, dying animal. My favorite quote from the story:

A News Corp source said that Rupert Murdoch, the company’s chairman and chief executive, remained committed to the internet, although he has conceded in an aside in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal that the privately owned Facebook was gaining ground. Asked whether newspaper readers were drifting off to MySpace, Mr Murdoch joked: “I wish they were.

They’re all going to Facebook at the moment.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article1957867.ece

Have we not done anything since Thursday, or have I just not created a Google Groups account yet?

Check out this op-ed about the privatization of spying.

Here is the discussion we've been having cloak and dagger via email:

Friends,
The more and more I think about the local wiki/Google Map idea, the more and more it seems like Google is about to do what we're doing. They already have wikipedia entries tagged on Google Earth by the plenty, so I suppose it's only a matter of time before entries wind down to local details. Hmm.. What do you think?
Blewisjizzle

I think that's a damn valid concern. One argument for pursuing local wiki/map projects is that they could help (not save, but help) local media outlets. With a media run wiki/map program, the news organization can put part of its own resources into producing content. It gives people an additional reason to go to, interact with, make content for and stick around a news organization's web site. I'm a big fan of Google, but I do think news organizations could benefit from running these kinds of sites themselves.

That being said, I have some qualms about news organizations running these sites too, but I think the benefits may outweigh my fears.

We can definitely talk about this more. I did some more thinking about the letter writing app and other things this weekend. I had breakfast with my 83-year-old grandma-in-law and she told me that when she was younger, she had a group of friends who met once or twice a month to write letters to politicians together. They would all help one another write the letters and them go mail them together. It was a social and political event for them. Made me rethink a letter writing tool some.

Courtney

Wow, old people sure knew how to get involved in politics.

Sam, will you bring that Wired article to the meeting tomorrow? We need to figure out the state of this organism we're helping evolve to make sure we're beating everyone, or else I think we should reconsider topics. The community wiki still has my full support, but I don't want another trip down Facebook carpool lane.

-Nate

More to follow.

I'm no fan of wrestling, but the Double murder-suicide of the Benoit family is making news on all fronts.

Here's more coverage of Wikipedia being a news outlet.

"What can I do to make you understand that I'm right about this? I don't want to pull the 'Believe me, I'm an expert' card, but believe me, I'm an expert."

I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.

Do you think reading general SQL tutorials like this one (for absolute beginners) is worthwhile, or should I focus on something that discusses MySQL in particular? Should I go ahead and download the MySQL program?

Anyone?

American Journalism Review has a big piece on the death of Backfence.com and on the future of hyperlocal news (including the requisite interview with Rob Curley and mention of LJWorld and Naples Daily News).

Maybe my favorite bit:

"In fact, many operators don't really have a business model. The first wave of hyperlocal sites has featured seat-of-the-pants operations, staffed part-time by dedicated volunteers, community activists and impassioned gadflies."

I went looking for some more news map type stuff tonight for the fun of it.

Ethan Zuckerman at Harvard Law School has been running an interesting news mapping program for awhile. It shows which countries various media outlets are paying the most attention to on any given day (goes back to 2003).

Buzztracker has one of the more (initially) attractive designs I've seen, but it's too busy and can't be zoomed in to small areas, world map only view.

Remember when I defended our Facebook app at Ithaca by saying it was a great way to build a reputation for a young developer?

According to a Reuters story, some people are treating it exactly that way.

Instead, companies looking to cash in on the excitement over Facebook -- where successful programs can attract millions of users in a matter of days -- are acting more like aggressive college job recruiters handing out generous signing bonuses. "There's this giant competition for brilliant young developers," said Max Levchin, founder and chief executive of San Francisco software developer Slide Inc. "Facebook is this instant leader board of who's best at user engagement and technical ability."

I was in Borders today using their drinking fountain and I browsed through their magazines. I picked up the Columbia Journalism Review, which had a story about Second Life journalism in it. I read the first bit -- talking about how sweet a SL journalist's virtual outfit was -- and then put it back, figuring I'd get the rest online, absorb it and have some scathing comment to make about it on this blog. However, the article is unavailable on their website. Weird. Anyhow, what I want to say is this: An article exists in CJR about SL that you might want to read; a half-pitcher of margaritas packed more of a punch than I thought it would.

Power to the people. Write your Congressperson. Have we thought of a better name than BetterLetter?

Google announced a couple of days ago that its competition to do 3D models of college campuses was over and released its list of seven winners. You can get the 3D layer from the official competition site.

More than 4,000 buildings were submitted.