CivicActions

Aaron Pava and I are at the NetSquared Conference, a gathering of social changemakers and geeks. This year the conference focuses on "mashups" for social good. Web mashups combine data and functionality from two distinct sources. Two iconic mashups include (Oakland Crimespotting, which maps crime data to Google maps, and Mapskrieg, which combines Craigslist apartment listings with Google maps.)

My buddy JD Leahy presented The Rosetta Project--an awesome endeavor to preserve endangered languages. Their mashup is considered to be in the "hackable" phase because it already maps audio and data about these languages onto Google Earth. At the conference, passers-by gazed at the crystal ball of alphabets and the 3" disk archive of 14,000 pages of language documentation on 2500 languages.

We just heard two-minute intros of the featured mashups. Some themes: Transparency in government (congressional bills), transparency in corporate practices (Know More, a Firefox add-on that indicates a companies environmental rating you when you're on the company's site). Recycling consumer goods (Freecycle: community-based cyber-curbside). New Orleans restoration. And all things related to maps (Green Map). I want to check out my local GreenMap group... obsess over map iconography, and invite people to participate in the EcoCitizen Trading Card project.

What's my connection to mountaintop removal? Quite intimate, as I learned from entering my zip code into ilovemountains.org. The site identified my local electricity company's participation in mountaintop removal in the Appalachian states—showing the specific mountains (I've?) destroyed, as well as testimonials and photos from coalfield residents. Is that the impact I want to make here on earth? Did I do that? ilovemountains' online campaign employs the following smart strategies:

• Brings grassroots organizations together to maximize impact (7 organizations from 5 Appalachian states collaborated on the campaign)
• Personally engages visitors to the site (by showing the far˜reaching impact of daily local actions)
• Provides content that supports the diversity of its users, contributes to coalition-building, and frames issues in new ways ("Go Tell it on the Mountain" is an interfaith page where users can contribute prayers; an online "National Memorial for the Mountains" uses Google Earth; users can absorb their preferred type of content—video, photo, written testimonials, interactive tools).
• Provides clear calls to action (support the Clean Water Protection Act by writing to congress)
• Increases visibility and media coverage with star power (Willie Nelson)
• Uses web tools to support and spread their message (YouTube, Google Earth, online pledges, "myconnection" tool)—note that this strategy supports the other strategies, it doesn't serve as an end in itself!

Help end mountaintop removal: support this important campaign!

Newsweek reports that the same entrepreneurs who funded the "user-generated revolution" are now looking to professionals to edit and produce online content.

Are we at a turning-point with the "wisdom of the crowds" and moving to a more trusted and refined Web?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/119091/page/1

Planning on a movie tonight...

Bought tickets on Fandango...

On the PRINT screen, a pop-up: "...added to your Facebook"

"what?!"

I log onto Facebook and see

woah.

Jon Morrow, guest poster on Copyblogger, wrote a great article on the best way to write headlines that gain Digg (or other social media site) attention.

The Secret: Give Them What They Want!

If you've been on the Internet anytime over the last five years, you may enjoy this:

Internet People - Watch more free videos

From the people who brought you the enormously popular The Machine is Us/ing Us.

I'm surprisingly impressed with the new Ask.com. Look out Google!

What I like most is the contextual search (suggested topics to "expand" or "narrow" your search) plus integrated wikipedia entries, images and videos - all on a single page layout.

For example, search: Barcelona, Spain

http://www.ask.com/web?q=Barcelona%2C+Spain

Looks good to me!

Guy Kawasaki, the poster child of dot-com boom and crazy Silicon Valley venture capitalism, has entered the next generation of the Web using all the "right" buzzwords.

"By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09" is the title of his latest blog post.

Learn how Guy spent only $4K on lawyers, $400 on a logo, bought 55 domain names, setup a Wordpress site and used Yahoo! as the hosting environment.

Too bad, the site didn't survive the Digg effect. Someone should remind Guy that social media sites need to be _running_ to be useful. (As of writing this post, the site was still down.)

Check-out the top 20 largest social bookmarking sites by unique monthly visitor data and other traffic metrics.