I am sure someone will find a way to monetize it over time and keep it going.
The code may be open, but local journalism isn't done without human journalists... so the business model of employing many humans to use this code might not be feasible? Local journalism is a tricky business to support nowadays.... Groupon is in a bit of trouble, and that might've been a way to fund hyperlocal news via a novel advertising model (maybe it still can be?).
I am sure someone will find a way to monetize it over time and keep it going. The commercial opensource business model is really getting serious adoption with companies like Redhat & liferay so opencode does not mean lack of ability to monetize a product.
Aha. Thanks for digging up the background info, Alison!
Since the code is still free, I guess anyone who wants to can still try to develop an EveryBlock clone.... but I guess there's a business model challenge in there?
I looked it up, @mhh, and you're right: EveryBlock received a $1.1 million Knight News Challenge grant in 2007. Looks as though MSNBC acquired EveryBlock in 2009 -- but the code remained free. After the grant ended, EveryBlock's founder was free to do what he wanted with the company--remain independent, sell it, close its doors, merge... anything, according to the blog I linked to by Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation's Journalism program director.
I thought EveryBlock won a Knight News Challenge Grant... so I hope future winners are picked with the consideration that big media companies won't be able to shut down these innovative news tools (and that the technology will be open sourced for others to try out or improve upon)...
We have a society of people who are overeducated, underemployed and underfunded.
The institutions and large organizations cannot and will not absorb them and will not allow for independent reserach or thought. Whether it's Big Media, Big Energy or Big Science, each of those spends as more time suppressing individual research than fostering it.
Would it not be more powerful to let people work on their own as part of a University of the Internet (which many now do)?
I think this whole area - which I also didn't realize had a name - is one of the most exciting aspects of social media, the Internet, and the decreasing cost of technologies. More and more people can afford to investigate those areas that interest them, from the comfort of their home or by virtually traveling half a world away, and share their thoughts and experiences with fellow afficionados. No matter your interest, the odds are good that you'll find someone who shares your hobby. Maybe there are more Renaissance Men and Women today than during the Renaissance, thanks to this civic engineering trend?
That's a smart use of social media since things like barking dogs, a neighbor's bbq smoke, or other annoying non-emergencies tend to get escalated when one or two cop cars come squealing into a neighborhood! And if the neighbor happens to see the complaint, then maybe the issue gets resolved without any official intervention at all -- even better for everyone involved. This must save us, the tax payers, a fair amount of change and improve customer satisfaction, as well as safety. Kudos to your PD.
Here in Kent, WA, USA the police started a Facebook page, and when I've posted complaints they have been responsive. Since they don't want us to use the 911 phone for anything other than emergencies it's a better place to post some things like complaining about a neighbor's barbeque smoke, since it's hard to know what can be done legally anyway. I found out they have a Neighborhood Mediation service that will come and get people together for those types of issues where the law is unclear or if all that is needed is to have all parties be aware of a possible friction.
I guess I have been a civic scientist all my life then! I only have a BS in Biology, so never made it officially into academia, but I believe I do research through reading and observation and have even published some hypotheses in my blogs and comments. And I consistently track, investigate and monitor issues in the sciences and technology and report findings. I believe in the past this was what a scientist was...the Victorian Gentleman who had some leisure time to do activities like rock hunting!
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It was about 10 years ago when a new generation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) alternatives started to gain acceptance and adoption among organizations of all sizes. And it has only been about five years since Amazon Web Services captured the marketplace's attention with Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3, which opened the door to a vast array of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings. Now, the third piece of the cloud computing puzzle is beginning to win over organizations seeking to build their own apps: platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
Energy consumption is a primary contributor to global warming. At the end of 2012, 40 percent of energy consumption in the US came from commercial and residential buildings.
Civil libertarians are outraged at the revelation the NSA is reportedly spying on more than one-third of Americans -- obtaining phone records from phone companies, in case it might need them for later use. Edward Snowden, the man who leaked details of that program, also revealed a second effort dubbed “Prism,” which represented a more aggressive grab of email and other communications. (See: Prism Exposes Unwritten Privacy Rules.)
In the past few weeks, Evernote, Twitter, and LinkedIn have implemented an optional security feature: two-step verification. It's time -- perhaps even past due -- for enterprises to consider offering this feature as well.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
So here we are, the last day of the 2013 US Open Golf Championship at Merion, and Phil Mickelson -- who has been a US Open runner-up five times now but never taken the trophy -- is right up there at the top of the leaderboard.
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