Silobreaker

Mapped up is an interesting application. But Silobreaker is totally different. and much more impressive!

It's acutally "an online search service for news and current events that delivers meaning and relevance beyond traditional search and aggregation engines. Its relational analysis and explanatory graphics provide users with unparalleled contextual insight into the news stories of the day."

The website is quite complex at first, and that's not a good thing. but once you've actually understand what you can find here, I bet you'll be amazed.

I haven't seen it all. Of course, my favourite part is the "hot spots"... the map.
Just have a look by trying out these links:

Explore Hot Spots:

Crime :	Bribery/Corruption | Murder/Manslaughter | Cocaine | Gun Crime | Internet Crime
Disasters & Accidents :	Natural Disasters | Man Made Disasters | Hurricanes | Flooding
Health & Environment :	Epidemics | Global Warming/Climate Change | Water / Food Safety | HIV/AIDS
Politics & Social :	Elections | Human Rights Issues | Poverty
Threats :	Terrorist Acts | CBRN / WMD
Organizations & People :	Al Qaeda | Condoleezza Rice | Red Cross/Crescent

Mapped Up

Watching the concurrence...

Mappedup.com is "an indespensable tool for the global newsjunkie". Have a look. it's quite interesting. it's based on RSS, and automated algorithm localizing the items.

It's not really only a website(although there is a full screen view, and personalizing tools online), it's actually "an application that tracks a large number of RSS news sources and displays their latest items on a world map, geographically and in real-time." When you want to download it, the application is whether a screen saver or an "active desktop" (something to put as a wallpaper, in the background of windows)

First time i tried, I couldn't actually sign up. this time, it worked.

one thing i don't like is the map, it's not very precise. The good thing is you can add the RSS feeds you want. that's actually something very difficult to do.

MappyNews is focused on "mappable" news. Many things that mappedup maps are not interesting to see on a map. and the automated localisation is not reliable at all.

Known Issues

I couldn't do the update i wanted to do this weekend.

Google Page Creator is not helping me a lot. Couldn't make the Google Reader clip script work on a new page. I know it can work as i made one work on the main page but not such luck on this one.

I could change the map codes using IE.

Then, I don't have the tools to make a new home page using all the space. I need 3 large columns to feet all the content.

Had new ideas but i guess it's postponed. Priority 1: good looking Home page!

Major decision

An update of the design will come soon.

Although I like the idea of using "Google page creator" to deal with the design and management of the website, the possibilities are just too limited. New rumors on coming up launch of the "Google Sites" were again reported today on Blogoscoped. (I wish that could happen very soon...)

But, I'm gonna work on a different homepage.

I need to take all the space that a page can offer. With Google page creator, the columns are too small. there are lot of space wasted and no way to use it.

Other than that, there are bugs when you include the javascript that are necessary to display a Google Map. (I use the "add HTML" feature, any other way to do that? a gadget? couldn't find)
When you put the java script, it seems to work well, but after a while (it's not necessarily true from the beginning), you can't access the HTML where you put the Javascript. anymore. very annoying.

update: it seems it's a firefox bug.

What can make MappyNews attractive

Yes, the website is not totally ready to be actively looking for users. But to be sure I'm heading towards the good direction, I have to think about what I'm trying to do.
Building the website is an interesting process and I wanna gather here my vision of what can make the attraction of the soon-to-be website.

- A new way to get/visualize news.
Mapping the news is something obviously very interseting. It's been done before but I've never found a reliable/stable website in the long term. More reflexion on this later.
the attraction of this feature is anyway not contestable.

- An alert tool (the breaking news part of the website)
I don't think it's the main purpose of the website. I'm just going to use some tools that garantee fast updates of the website, as well as a way to get free update by sms (for example).

Google Maps is quickly updated via "My Maps"
Google News link in the Gmaps bubble provide up-to-date info.
Google reader share items provide more specific source to the website.
Twitter is also very fast and easy to use.

So that could interest some users.

- Specific information.
That's not done yet, but I want different maps covering different kind of information. That would make the point of mapping stronger.

I already have materials for a "Green MappyNews", a mapping of news related to environment.

- A clean design
information website are often clustered. A map is a good way to rank the world information.

- A community
the tools allow collaboration. Even Google Page Creator will (certainly) soon be updated to offer new feature from the wiki world (Jotspot acquired by Google).
This is the attraction which i believe will be the hardest to build. It will take time. First, the website will have to be enough reliable (regular updates) and interesting to attract visitors. Then visitors will eventually be users (user generated content)

NB: I'm not starting a business. This is just a personnal project for the time being. The business approach is just experimental.

Ps: Scoble writes about is new job and why he hasn't start his own business. I can relate to a lot in his explanations. Interesting.


[update] changed "green map" to Green MappyNews, following the comment below.

Karachi blast.

I saw this news tonight and I put it on MappyNews.

I first put it on Karachi.

Then i've tried to look for the Landhi district

"The bomb was planted on a motorbike and exploded outside a textile factory in the Landhi district of Karachi," senior police official Mohammed Javed told AFP.

Typing Landhi in Google Maps when zooming on Karachi returns many place mark in one neighborhood. But that's not very convincing, is it?

Other stuff to map:

- Then, there are other things in the story that we could map

"Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, flew in to the city minutes before the bomb went off, although officials said he and Musharraf were far away from the blast and there was no suggestion either man was targeted."

...the airport.

- How about the place where Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was at that time.

- Or the other bomb:

Separately, a bomb exploded in an open area of the southwestern industrial town of Hub, which borders Karachi, but caused no damage or casualties, local police official Mahdi Bugti told AFP.

- The hospital:

Seemi Jamali, who runs the main Jinnah hospital's casualty department, said there were two teenage boys among the dead, while another doctor confirmed that there were 50 people injured.

...too bad. I can't take the time to do that now.

News sources and more thoughts

Today I've picked up 3 news. I didn't do much with it but the project is going forward nonetheless.
I've been thinking about some issues. One of them is the news sources.

• Newsalert

2 things I put on the map were coming from "newsalert". I've always think twitter was a great way to get breaking news. I'm not sure who is behind newsalert but, one thing for sure, it's not "reliable". I mean, not every news are covered. (maybe I will try to contact them/him/her to know more) they can be a day without a tweet (though there are breaking news worth being covered...)
Actually, Newsalert inspired me MappyNews.

Anyway, today was great. 2 breaking news. that's I've put on a map right away. I couldn't spend to much time on it, so there were no real "added value". just a continuation of the experiment.

I didn't tweet those because it was already done. Newsalert could be a "partner" of Mappynews. I don't want to duplicate the content but enrich it.

Both link in Newsalert were from the BBC website. I put them on the map. But after thinking about it, I should make a research in Google News and link to that so as to offer diversity of coverage, and as well as the latest evolution of the news.

• Floods in Mozambique

That's the other thing I've put on the map. It's no breaking news I think. It's been 10 days or so. But i've picked up an article in my feed reader.

Actually when i did a research on Google Maps for "Flood in Mozambique", it return some mapping already done by the company. It seems there were some important floods there in February 2007.

• Location of a small village in south Thailand

After mapping (not precisely) the Thai ambush this morning, I've tried to find the district or the village in Google Maps but all i found was the news I had mapped 5 minutes before. Are there that quick to index the content in GMap? I need to run some test. maybe the research include what we have mapped.

• Links to Google Maps content

One thing I would have like is to be able to link from Google Maps to Google Maps without openning a new tab. It must be possible. there has to be way though I know it's going to be difficult for me to find it.
It could be great. The link in the bubble will add other content when being clicked.

For example, My brother gave me a link. it's a map by the french newspaper "20 minutes" with all the places where Sarko (French lame president) is going. I added that link in the bubble. When clicked I would just like the content being added to the map. not open a new tab with a new map. See what I mean?

• Website edition problems

For the time being MappyNews is not ready to be launched further. I have got a problem on editing the website in Google Page Creator. (Hope the new version is coming soon)
The map script doesn't behave well in the window when being edited. Hard to explain.
I've tried another version of the website. and another one.
I'll give you the update when I solve the problem.

How to: participate

I didn't really map anything today, but I would like to describe how YOU could participate in this project.
There's many things that could be done. let's first focus on building a convenient website, with possibilities for other people to participate. On the main page, we'll keep a worldmap without any special focus. let's just have recent news there.

How to participate. How to edit the content.

First, pick the news.
That's not as easy as it sounds. Almost any news could be mapped. We'll need to pick news that could be mapped and "add value".
The site will obviously not cover every news. it will be very diverse first.
...

Pick the source.
Same here. no criteria at first... but that's something to think about. Diverse source is good

Map the news.
To do that, click on "view larger map" under the map on the front page. Then, in the right column, click "Save to my maps" (you need a google account to do that). then, you should be able to click "edit" and map and edit anything you want on the world map.

[optionnal] Edit the news
A good title (clear, in english). An abtract of the article/news, a link to the news source, a picture. a tag about the precision of the mapping: to be defined, not precise, precise.

[optionnal] Clean the map
Move some news to the archive to keep a clean map on the "latest Mappy News".

[optionnal] write a blog post about the mapping

[optionnal] Twitter if it is a breaking news.

RSS

Google Maps don't have feeds yet. You can subscribe to the twitter account to know when the maps are updated.

We I will try to use twitter only for breaking news. If the news or/and the correspondent map has some major interesting change, I'll make a blog post.

Ps: I"ve got to stop using "we" like in the first post. For the time being, I'm the only member of this start-up :-)

Collaborate

The maps of MappyNews are completely open for collaboration via the Google Maps website.

Mappy News "capital"

Mappy News is just an idea yet, as you might have guessed from what the website is displaying now.

We are using free hosting, mainly from Google. Mappy News is using the latest features of third parties website to offer what we believe can be an alternative originial information canal.

I only own a single computer and an internet connection at home and at work.
The other things we own and use are free accounts on other website to create contents with the available Internet tools.

English please

Well, yes. MappyNews is only available in english for the time being.

Despite being a french startup, every news title/twits/maps will be in english. That's because we are looking for users in the whole wild world. so yeah, english.

Mode start-up

Bonjour et bienvenu sur le blog de "Mappy News", la start-up que je viens de créer dans ma petite chambre parisienne.

Je ne me savais pas le cœur entrepreneur mais à force de se passionner sur le web 2.0, on se dit qu'il faut tenter des expériences. Il suffisait d'une idée.

L'idée de Mappy News, c'est tout simplement de créer un canal d'information alternatif dont la spécificité réside dans la cartographie, et dans l'adoption des NTICs en général.
Les besoins du "consom'acteur" est encore à définir.
MappyNews embauche! (des bénévoles)

Le site Mappy News viens donc d'ouvrir ces portes (en BETA cela va sans dire) avec un blog et un compte twitter.