Idea Lab

Viva CityCircles! Light Rail Publication for Phoenix in Alpha

by Aleksandra Chojnacka
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

First, a quick recap of our project: CityCircles is a multi-platform portal (using web and mobile) which delivers stop by stop information for Phoenix's light rail system. Information includes businesses and services, news, events, and promotions around each stop. We encourage collaboration and will feature a social networking aspect to the site. Our launch party in Tempe this past month led me to realize that this is all just now starting... Up until that moment CityCircles had been a concept that we've had to explain to our friends and colleagues - using hand gestures or drawings. Many people thought the...

• October 21, 2009
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Overcoming Drupal Challenges as SochiReporter Nears Launch

by Alexander Zolotarev
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

SochiReporter is getting ready to launch on the web and for mobile users. We spent the last three weeks fixing linguistic, technical and design bugs, all with the goal of maximizing ease of use. So far we have drawn a fabulous group of people from both local and virtual communities: garage tech geeks and web schizophrenics, coffee-shop amateurs, and folks who want to use the site and offer feedback. Their comments have helped us to get better. We also attracted an avid gamer in Sochi who spends most of his time in an underground Internet café at the center...

• September 18, 2009
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Making Progress Toward Launch of Phoenix Light Rail Pub

by Aleksandra Chojnacka
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Daily Phoenix is a website and mobile app for Phoenix metro residents who use or live around the light rail. We are providing news and information per stop. Information includes business and services, events, promotions, gossip, networking opportunities, etc. all on a stop by stop basis. Where are we today? It has been an incredibly busy couple of months! As Adam mentioned in his last post, we were featured on "Good Morning Arizona" last month. They want to have us back when we finally launch the project and have us demo it on live TV. Very exciting! We've made lots...

• August 11, 2009
• 1 comment

Getting the Daily Phoenix Off the Ground

by Aleksandra Chojnacka
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Before I dive in, I'd like to give readers a brief overview of what exactly our project, Daily Phoenix, is. This past December, Phoenix debuted a new light rail system which has changed the physical and social landscape of the city. We will use print, web and mobile technology to cater to these new commuters, offering news and information, games, social networking features and promotions on a stop-by-stop basis so that they can interact with the city on a more meaningful level. The idea developed in a digital media entrepreneurship class at ASU and now here we are almost a...

• July 13, 2009
• 4 comments

Printcasting Launches in Bakersfield

by Dan Pacheco
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

This week we publicly launched Printcasting in Bakersfield, California. While our focus is on outreach to the 330,000 people who live there, anyone can now use the site to create an automatically updating, printable PDF magazine. I invite you all to give it a try at http://www.printcasting.com and let us know what you think. The more early usage we have the better. One easy way to get started is to browse through a list of recently updated Printcasts and subscribe to a few. For those of you who haven't followed the progress of our Knight News Challenge funded project, the...

• March 17, 2009
• 16 comments

Spot.Us: Launching a Site and Being Iterative

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Anybody that's been following my posts on IdeaLab should notice a pattern. Growing a Community and the Importance of Being Iterative Eliminating the Fear of Being Open and the Importance of Being Iterative Starting Small and the Importance of Being Iterative I'm always trying to chop Spot.Us into small and executable steps. Test an idea, see how the community reacts and if it's positive, build a more stable infrastructure around it. The Spot.Us wiki, which has been moderately successful with three and a half pitches funded, is a perfect example. It was very informative and helped us refine our designs...

• November 10, 2008
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EveryBlock Launched

by Adrian Holovaty
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

We've launched the first version of our Knight-funded project, EveryBlock. It offers a news feed for every block, neighborhood and ZIP code in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Our launch announcement gives more information about what we're trying to do. We've still got a long way to go, but it's good to have this initial version out the door. Please let us know what you think! You can e-mail us at feedback at everyblock.com....

• January 24, 2008
• 1 comment