Idea Lab

Can the Internet have a heart?

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I attended a conference on "Online Giving Marketplaces" at Stanford University this past week, which was a great gathering of online donation, volunteer, and social matchmaking sites like Kiva.org and GlobalGiving. The kind of organizations that are doing in the social service sector what sites like Prosper.com are doing in the commercial peer to peer space. One site among many worth checking out is ModestNeeds, which gives grants of up to $5,000 to average folks - for things like paying off overdue bills and rent, etc. In these challenging economic times it's a welcome and important service. One of the...

• October 11, 2008
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Virtually and Really Watching the Trees (grow)

by Leslie Rule
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The city of Shanghai is geo-tagging over 1500 registered ancient tress with the plan to use gps devices to monitor and protect the trees in ways they couldn't before. Not unlike many cities, modernization poses enormous risks (and has exacted quite a toll) to nature and the natural. So often our built environment doesn't take into account what has been here for so long. Shanghai's gps monitoring allows the trees to be tracked in real time and the government to move quickly if the location of the tree changes. The system also enables construction companies to get location data early...

• March 20, 2008
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