Markmedia

Glasgow tagged [Make a local PiciWiki]

The Glaswegians Photo Archive is a byproduct of the Cranhill Arts Project, the largest documentary photography project in Scotland; 30,000 photographs taken between 1989 and 1992.

This on-line archive provides a selection of these photographs that are "a record of Glasgow through photographs of its people - their lives, habits, quirks and cultures." 
The images are organized into topical albums, such as "Things You Don't See Anymore" where aspects of Glasgow that have disappeared or been altered in the sixteen years since the photographs were taken are displayed. 
These lost Glaswegian sights include orange and black buses, smoking in pubs, and getting pissed.
Or Nice Glaswegian Ladies, which is exactly what it says on the tin.
Another album, Protest and survive, shows just how hated the Poll Tax was with Glaswegians and goes on to group celebrations like May Day and the release of Nelson Mandela with other political campaigns. Visitors can sign up for an account in order to tag photos, and with or without an account, it's possible to search or browse by existing tags.

In this flickrista age, why is there not an archive of every town in the UK, with taggable pictures and the ability to build the stories told by the pictures? Make a local PiciWiki and grow the knowledge.

Update: Joanna at the Birmingham Post let me know about a similar site for the the West Midlands - the big picture

crash test community

Here's the thing. A landrover skids on an isolated rural road, hits a wooden pole, flips and lands on its roof.
It happens. But to follow the drama live from several different angles is not so usual.
It starts with a tweet:
          just talking to @documentally as he hit a patch of black white and did some scooby doo wowza sounds as he missed a metal post by cm's :)
A minute later:
christ! - now christian has put his landrover on it's roof in a gulley!!! - he's unhurt thank good, sending him aa details to mobile..
then a flurry of tweets between friends locating exactly where the accident happened, how the guy is and what help he needs.
Then comes the video. 

This is live from the accident streamed over 3g on the N95 to seesmic.
This sparks off a flurry of (inter)activity with medical advice and engineering help.
This is ongoing as I write.

Interactive public broadcasting from mobile phones is a fact. The structures are in place.
And yet good phones are not seen as a necessary journalistic tool by almost any of our news organizations.
While we play catch up to yesterdays technology the new players are once again the public and they are just streaming ahead.
Why will they need us (traditional news media)?

Answers on a streaming vid please.

Cnn tube - the shills are out

Mediaweek reports that CNN is all set to launch iReport.com, a kind of CNN-Tube where its all up to the user/poster. CNN has, like most media organizations, vetted its user generated content (ugc) with about ten per cent getting through. In the article Susan Grant, executive vp of CNN News Services is quoted as saying:

“The community will decide what the news is. We are not going to discourage or encourage anything…iReport will be completely unvetted.”  (CNN will, however, monitor the site for objectionable content.)

Later in the article Craig Woerz, managing partner at Media Storm is quoted as saying

“We love it. That’s exactly the kind of things our advertisers are looking for. What we like about citizen journalism is that it’s emotional and real.”

Couple of things here to think about.
If the readers really decide what is news, who will decide what is objectionable?
Will the contributers get paid? My guess is not. [see the boilerplate for the present i-reports at the end of this post]
And thats why the Craig Woerz quote says so much. This is not an exercise in community building. Nor is it a display of the mighty mainstream media finally ceding the power of agenda setting and news evaluation to "the people". Its just one more attempt to milk the lucrative cash cow of ugc.

We need to start to build communities of collaboration. We need tap in to the collective consciousness of the communities we wish to engage with and understand that they are not cattle to milk but collaborators in constructing the new news agenda of the future.

This is what you give CNN:

"By submitting your material, for good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency and receipt of which you hereby acknowledge, you hereby grant to CNN and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit, or any portion thereof, as incorporated in any of their programming or the promotion thereof, in any manner and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without payment to you or any third party."

Well, they do need the money, poor things.

Reuters play with Twitter

Reuters Labs is an interesting place to visit and Reuters in general seems to doing good things with interactivity and new forms of dissemination.
Note the "twitter this" button on this article.
 

 

 

 

 

If more places start to do this what will it mean for Twitters signal/noise ratio? Or will it increase the usefulness of the service?