Idea Lab

How Maps Shape Information and News

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

This video was one of the amazing public mapping projects featured at this year's Center for Social Media's Beyond Broadcast 2008. Public Radio International President and CEO Aliza Miller created this video. She begins with the what's known in digital storytelling as the "dramatic" question: How does the news shape the way we see the world. How can maps shape the way we see the world? When I look at the mapping being done these days, I love hyperlocal, community mapping. But as has been debated here, some community mapping projects are devoid of adequate context, and therefore it's difficult...

• August 9, 2008
• 1 comment

Is There a Marketplace for Local Storytelling?

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I recently took another look at Organic City, a project launched in 2006 to provide residents of Oakland, California with a place to listen to and share stories about happenings in their respective neighborhoods or to take audio and video tours of the city - all created by locals. The stories are tagged to specific locations in the city via a Google map, and the site also offers a special mobile version allowing stories to be uploaded and downloaded via a cell phone or other mobile device. Organic City is one of thousands of locative media projects created over the...

• July 24, 2008
• 1 comment

Whither Hyperlocal Mapping

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Three and a half conferences (12 hours onsite training at Google counts as the half) in three weeks has about done me in. At various times, I inevitably ask myself, "Why am I here and not at home?" But I realize why I travel to these events when the light bulb goes off. Usually it's about connecting the dots in a way that with 20-20 hindsight seems like stating the obvious. I posted a blog in early May on the Where 2.0 conference, focusing on mapping and social activism; I noted that having a purpose (outside of making money and/or...

• July 6, 2008
• 4 comments

From GeoGraffiti to GeoJournalism

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I recently began playing around with a new service called GeoGraffiti, which allows you to post or access voice notes or "markers" while at a specific physical location using any cell phone. I like the idea of localized, user generated information which GeoGraffiti is a platform for. Everything from getting traffic tips to the real time reviews and tips on local restaurants or places of interest. Think of it as a kind of mobile Yelp (user generated reviews on business services, entertainment, and events) using voice instead of just text. The other nice feature of GeoGraffiti is that is allows...

• May 25, 2008
• 2 comments

Any There at Where 2.0?

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Where 2.0 happened May 12-14 at the San Francisco Airport Marriot just south of the city. This annual event, now in its 4th year, is a strange mix of grassroots geo-enthusiasts and entrepreneurial geo-hackers. Where 2.0 is primarily a developer's conference, so the majority of time and certainly the focus was on tools and how they function and less on how these tools are being used. (Or not being used. For the most part, location apps are in beta.) There was definitely the Field-of-Dreams-feeling, "build it and they will come." The exceptions were the tools and apps in the social...

• May 19, 2008
• 3 comments

Medill Grad Students Study Locative Journalism

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

At least once a day I ask myself how locative media can be used to more fully engage and connect folks to their communities. The question for this blog is a bit more focused: how can locative media and geo-localized content find form in the art and craft of journalism. And then to my surprise and excitement, LoJo, a new voice, enters the frey and expands the discussion. From www.lojoconnect.com: Shorthand for locative journalism, LoJo is the name of a project launched by a team of Northwestern University graduate students to study the intersection of journalism and emerging location-based technologies....

• May 12, 2008
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Locative Media in the Newsroom

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Here's a short sampling of some of the ways that mainstream media in integrating locative (location-based) technology tools - some of which already been discussed on this blog. The folks at LoJoConnect are also conducting a survey of how newsrooms are using locative media. Take the short survey here and pass it along...they will be sharing the results. For folks intersted in locative media and news, it will be one of the topics covered at this weeks NewsTools2008 conference Silicon Valley. Hope to see you there!...

• April 27, 2008
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Google Earth, New York Times Team Up

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

In early March, the amazing Amy Gahran and I presented at Knight Digital Media Center seminar talking about new tools. I spoke about locative media, showed examples, learned a lot, and assured all the participants that they too could create multimedia editorial pieces using Google Earth's very simple toolkit. One participant from a medium-sized paper in New York State took me up on my offer to walk her through the process. She thought it was cool and wanted to bring it into her newsroom. We soon hit the wall: systemic infrastructure issues like only administrators can add applications (standard operating...

• April 13, 2008
• 3 comments

"Navigating Life" is No Longer a Metaphor

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Once upon a time, four travelers began a global quest... So says the video that launches, Urbanista Diaries, the second phase of the Nokia's advertising campaign for its N82 series phone. The first phase of the campaign followed four of Nokia's favorite bloggers on a trip around the world armed only with, "their wits, guile, and a Nokia N82 multimedia computer." (Two of the four were already blogging on Nokia and mobile devices, and all four skew toward mobile geekiness, although with a fair amount of the artiste sprinkled on top.) Their mission? Capture the stories and the beauty of...

• March 30, 2008
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Going Beyond Point A to Point B

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Phones use one of two methods to figure out where they are (and if you happen to be carrying it, where you are). The first is built-in gps. Nokia is leading the way with these smart phones, having announced four new phones earlier this month at the Mobile World Congress 2008, where 50,000 people (including keynote Robert Redford) gathered in Barcelona to talk all things mobile (but mostly about devices and less-than-innovative uses of these devices). The second way to locate your device is how Apple is doing it. Late to the game and experimenting with workarounds, location-based applications found...

• February 26, 2008
• 1 comment

Place-Based Video Games Could Transform Education

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

After reading Paul Grabowicz's post Why Journalists Should Develop Video Games, I thought I'd chime in and riff off of that statement and ask: What is the value of video games in education, formal and informal, and in the delivery of information. Paul makes great point about who determines perspective. In my field of digital storytelling, we often talk about what I call "the fading glory of the third person editorial overlay." Just look at community-created content; it's a form whose hallmark is the lack of editorial overlay, which may or may not be appropriate, but often the lack of...

• February 11, 2008
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Ubiquitous Networks: The Trails Of Our Digital Identities

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

For a while now I've been describing the locative process as overlaying a virtual landscape on the physical world. I've been describing locative media as embedded content in place. Some people do ask, "in place of what?" In the end, it's all a way of saying Locative Media is the hybridization of the virtual world and the physical world relying upon location-enabled mobile devices (eg, 50% of cellphones) leading to the formation of ubiquitous networks full of cultural content. Sounds good. The only part of that statement that's a bit tricky is the "ubiquitous networks." Not being a particularly dedicated...

• January 15, 2008
• 1 comment

When our Phones Do the Social Networking

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

One of the more interesting mobile media trends we may see more of this year is mobile social networking. Simply put, that means the ability for one person to connect with another via a mobile phone or other device while on the go. Think of your cell phone saying "hello" to another cell phone within a certain geographic proximity, based on identified shared interests on publicly available profiles. Typically one must sign up for or opt in to a service designed for this purpose, set up a profile, and make one's cell phone available via wireless technologies like GPS or...

• January 5, 2008
• 2 comments

Categorizing and Contextualizing Locative Media

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

It's holiday time, no projects to speak of, so we'll talk a bit about the theory. No doubt we'll leave a lot out, but I'm considering this a first discussion and will return to talk more about where and wither locative media. Recent discussions in locative media at the Center for Locative Media around the next-step need for categorizing and contextualizing locative media. As I mentioned before, locative media got its start in the art world. Avant-garde and conceptual artists, grasping early the potential that new and emerging technologies enabled, wanted to use the landscape as a material and to...

• December 19, 2007
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Google and OLPC's Move to Create Global Pen Pals

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Google, UNICEF, and One Laptop Per Child recently announced the launching of the Our Stories project. The effort records the stories of children from different parts of the world and places them on a Google Map. But more than just an oral/video history project combined with geotagging, the effort claims to be: A joint initiative to preserve and share the histories and identities of cultures around the world by making personal stories available online in many languages. Using laptops, mobile phones and other recording devices, children will record, in their native languages, the stories of elders, family members and friends....

• December 17, 2007
• 1 comment

Finding Overlap Between Locative Media and Location-Based Games

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I should disclose upfront I'm not much of a "gamer." When I was younger, I found myself in a few endless games of Risk, never did understand the appeal of Monopoly, and always wanted to overlay a romantic narrative on Chess. (How did the Queen convince the knight to battle the Bishop to death?) But I did like sports. Not so much because of the gaming aspect, but because sports are generally played outdoors. Whole summers playing running bases, hide and seek, and any number of make believe games. Like locative media, location-based games take place outside. Due to this...

• December 5, 2007
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More Than Just Finding A Toilet

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

A recent article on a service in London and several U.S. cities that allows you to locate nearby public toilets by texting "toilet" on your mobile phone got me to thinking about the practical applications of locative media. Many mobile advertising companies are hard at work creating platforms and services to push customized ads and real time "specials" to your mobile device as you walk by a store or drive down the street. But what about services that help you to connect with your neighbors, and enhance your community, or keep you safe. Aren't those practical too? For example, what...

• December 3, 2007
• 3 comments

When Mobile Media Becomes Political

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

MobileActive.org posted an interesting interview with "Artivist" Ricardo Dominguez, who is working on a locative media project designed to assist immigrants crossing the border to the U.S. from Mexico. His work-in-progress concept, called the Transborder Immigrant Tool, leverages GPS enabled cell phones to aid in the safe passage of desert border crossers. "The device seeks to reduce the number of deaths along the border by helping immigrants locate resources such as water caches and safety beacons." Not only is the tool seemingly well designed (read below) for the population it targets, but it seems relevant for remote and wilderness emergency...

• November 23, 2007
• 2 comments

"Locating" the Mississippi Blues in 3 Platforms

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

lat 33.4043 long -90.3055 Mississippi Blues Trail Tour in Google Earth (download Google Earth for free, then launch the kmz file) ScreenCast of Mississippi Blues Google Earth Geo-Tagged Project (a screencast is a video capture of what happens on the computer monitor.) Friday night arrived, our round-the-clock week's worth of work was done and it was finally time to present to all the participants and guest of the National Black Programming Consortium's New Media Institute. Prominent leaders in the Public Broadcasting world and NGO filmmaking community had participated in panels all week: Notables from PBS, CPB, NPR, PRX, ITVS,...

• November 22, 2007
• 2 comments

'Cheatin' Mamas and Dirty Lowdown Papas'

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

We're half way through our geo-tagging of three of the markers on the Blues Trail here at the National Black Programmers Consortium's New Media Institute in Jackson, MS. Yesterday, wheels up at 7 am to Hickory Street in Canton, MS to start the locating part of locative media. Our job is to investigate the question, "What happens to meaning and understanding when you locate content in a relevant place?" Hickory Street, once a thriving black neighborhood, now houses only a few dilapidated buildings and a sandwich shop. Given that, we were astounded how many people stopped to share their memories...

• November 16, 2007
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