Idea Lab

Printcasting.com Helps Spark a Global Movement

by Dan Pacheco
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Ever since the Knight News Challenge was first announced in 2006, I've been fascinated and inspired by its open nature. While the primary goal of the contest is to fund great ideas for new local news and information projects, it has a larger mission. It also requires those projects to eventually be released under open source licenses. To me this has always meant that News Challenge projects have a responsibility to a larger community of people who will one day repeat our successes in their communities.

• January 23, 2009
• 3 comments

Tapping the Potential of Geotagging

by Dan Schultz
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Last week I saw someone wearing a shirt that said "Think Globally. Act Locally. Eat Noodles." The noodles part still confuses me, but I think the rest of the message does a really good job of summarizing what I want digital media to facilitate. It seems that the key to bringing local into the inherently non-physical Internet is Geotagging and geographic interfaces. These technologies open up some innovative ways to present stories, but before looking at this idea more closely I'm going to describe the current situation from the perspective of a 21 year old media consumer in the hopes that it will illustrate the need that I'm trying to address.

• November 15, 2007
• 7 comments