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.

My goals

- explore my entrepreneurship fiber
- experiment the news maker dilemma
- managed a user oriented website
- promote myself
- make something of my Internet/map/news passions

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.