Posts FromNovember, 2008

30
Nov 08

Missing the Point

Posted by mark in General — View Comments

I understand why people are jumping all over the discussion of the outsourcing of news to offshore operations.  It sounds crazy and just might be.  Maureen Dowd writes about it today in the New York Times.

But why is everyone focused on trying to make the old model of newspapers and reporting survive as opposed to innovating and embracing new forms of news, like participatory journalism or hyperlocal bloggers?

The unfortunate events in Mumbai showed that witnesses can be a great source of news.  And, you don’t have to look any further than our weekly Blogiology 101 posts to see that there is incredible coverage happening at the hyperlocal level.

These are new forms of news gathering and they cost a heck of a lot less than even offshore operations.  News organizations should embrace their community of readers to find new ways to help cover their news. Use your brand, traffic and salesforce to drive traffic and revenue to new groups of people who are already writing about their own communities.  Hey, they already live there and actually really care about it too!

The days of expensive and daunting content management systems are long gone, as is the monopoly of the big daily newspaper in any market.  Everyone can be a publisher in 2 minutes or 140 characters.  We’re working with a few visionary publishers who want to embrace this revolution and be a leader in the next types of news organizations.

But, apparently it’s more fun to talk about the (maybe) crazy ideas than the ones that might actually work.

25
Nov 08

Dept of Blogiology 101: Richmond

Posted by Nina in General / News — View Comments

Next up for our Blogiology class is Richmond, VA.

Previous classes have covered Dallas, Phoenix, Durham, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Portland, Philadelphia, Buffalo, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Boston.

So, what’s been going on in Richmond this week?  A slew of DUI cases, a crime wave, degree granting and revoking, open forum for redevelopment project, and the upcoming holiday “Grand Illumination.” Want more local Richmond knowledge? Read on.

Bloggiest Richmond Neighborhoods:

Top Richmond Blogs:

  1. North Richmond News/ River District News/ Church Hill People’s News/ Carver and Jackson Ward News/ Hills and Heights: its a 5-way tie! This network of neighborhood sites, which grew from a template originally designed by local blogger John Murden, provide a platform for community news with truly local, frequently updated stories.
  2. Fan District Hub – more like an online ‘zine, this blog offers long-form articles and provides a detailed calendar of upcoming Richmond events under the uber appropriate moniker of “Hyperlocal.”
  3. Buttermilk & Molasses - an active member of Richmond’s political and blogger scene, John Sarvay has most recently been vocal about Richmond’s Downtown Master Plan on this popular blog.
  4. River City Rapids – the posts are few and far between, but this blog deserves major kudos for being one of the few covering the arts scene in Richmond.
  5. The Richmond Democrat – a roundup of Richmond’s Democratic politicians and politics.

Up and Coming Blogs in Richmond (in no particular order)

  • 10S Boulevard – This zany blog covers the beat of its moniker, 10 South Boulevard. Returning readers get a glimpse into the world of Mr. Jangles, the neighborhood cat, as well as local car accidents, funky smells, and visiting colonies of deer.
  • 86 Richmond – this foodie digests local dining spots so that you can have the best of what they’re serving.
  • RVA Jazz – a love of jazz music permeates this site. Pics from recent shows, upcoming releases, a custom playlist, and live show calendar all can be found here.
  • Near West End News –  A new(ish) blog that covers the issues affecting the more suburban West End area of Richmond.
  • In Vino Veritas – a couple shares their love (and vitriol) of local cafes, restaurants, and lounges.

Most Talked About Stories:

Submit your blog to be included in Outside.in’s Richmond listings.

Have your own Richmond Top 5 or want the Professor of Blogiology to come to your town? Raise your hand and we’ll call on you, or you can leave a note in the comments section.

Methodology: Our rankings track local buzz by analyzing a mix of variables including: total number of posts, location of posts, links from other sites in the community, and feedback from Outside.in members. Bloggiest Neighborhoods/Top Blogs, past 30 days; Most Talked About Stories, past 7 days.

20
Nov 08

Catch Mark Speaking @Kelsey ILM Conference Tomorrow

Posted by Nina in Events / General — View Comments

Today through Friday the Kelsey group is hosting the Interactive Local Media conference in Santa Clara, CA. If you’re planning on attending, make sure to check out the Web 2.0 Communities panel, where Mark will be speaking.

20
Nov 08

Outside.in StoryMaps Help Guide

Posted by mark in General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

So, you’ve registered for GeoToolkit and you’ve generated the code to add a StoryMap to your blog. What do you do with that code? (If you don’t have your code yet, go to GeoToolkit, register your site, and get your code!) Here are the instructions for pasting the code into the sidebar of the most common blog platforms. If you don’t see your platform below or want to put your StoryMap in another part of your site but aren’t sure how, email us for instructions.

Blogger (for example any site with “blogspot” in the URL)

  1. Click the Layout tab
  2. Click Add a Gadget (if you don’t see ‘Add a Gadget,’ click on the Page Elements link at the top of the page.)
  3. Scroll down to the HTML/JavaScript gadget and click it.
  4. Give your StoryMap a title, paste the code in the ‘Content’ box, and click the Save button on the bottom right.
  5. View your blog and admire your new StoryMap!

WordPress
(Currently only non-hosted WordPress accounts are supported. WordPress.com StoryMaps are coming soon!)

Option A (The Plugin)–Go to The outside.in StoryMap WordPress Plugin and follow the instructions there.

Option B (Manual Code Paste)

  1. Click “Appearance” in the left column, then click “Editor” in the section that opens beneath Appearance
  2. Click “Sidebar” under the “Theme Files” header in the right column.
  3. This part is a little tricky—you need to figure out where you want your map to show up compared to other sidebar elements. This will usually be right after a </li> tag for another sidebar item.
  4. Once you’ve found the correct spot, type type <li id=”My StoryMap”>, paste your StoryMap code, then type </li>.
  5. Depending on your template, you may want to add a header above your StoryMap in <h2> or <h3> tags.
  6. *Note* The above instructions may differ depending on your template. Send us an email with specific questions.

Typepad
Make sure you have the option to customize your theme. Typically, it’s only available to subscribers at the Plus level and above.

Follow these instructions to add the StoryMap to your Typepad theme.

Tumblr
(We recommend you use the small map size to start and then customize it, if you need to.)

  1. Click on Customize in the top right corner
  2. Click on Info in the top left corner
  3. Paste the code into the Description field.
  4. Click on Save Changes in the top right corner.
  5. Admire your map and go to GeoToolkit to change the size if you need to.

18
Nov 08

Evolution: Newspapers

Posted by mark in General — View Comments

Today’s NYT has a good piece on new models that are evolving from the cutbacks at newspapers.  Today’s focus: investigative journalism.

Tells the story of how the cuts at local newspapers led indirectly to the formation of VoiceofSanDiego.org, a great not for profit news organization focused on hard hitting investigative pieces.

It is too bad that the local newspaper couldn’t create a new model and benefit directly from it.  Newspapers do have the opportunity to use new models to extend their coverage to their readers’ benefit, reduce their costs and accumulate salable ad inventory.

Obviously, with our focus, we’re talking about a few things:

* solutions applicable to all sections of the paper (news, sports, arts, business etc…), like

* deep integration with and aggregation of all content providers in the local market; to

* leverage their brand and salesforce to drive traffic and revenue to those content providers, thereby creating new inventory; and

* build for new and evolving technologies and platforms like mobile and less for print.

All of which should lead to a more defensible and relevant position in the market.

So, to be clear, we know there are some forward-thinking companies charging down the path to new solutions.  Heck, we’re working with some of them.  Stay tuned for some updates on that front.

It’s heartening to see new ideas evolve out of the cuts, but I still think newspapers can be more aggressive about being the change they need to become.

18
Nov 08

Dept of Blogiology 101: Dallas

Posted by Nina in General — View Comments

Next up for our Blogiology class is Dallas, TX.

Previous classes have covered Phoenix, Durham, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Portland, Philadelphia, Buffalo, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Boston.

So, what’s been going on in Dallas this week?  Bloggers are rapping about the exploits of Mark Cuban, city leaders turn down voters’ call for Cesar Chavez Boulevard, school districts and local food pantry face money woes, and a new(ish) film festival comes to town. Want more local Dallas knowledge? Read on.

Bloggiest Dallas Neighborhoods:

Top Dallas Blogs:

  1. Back Talk – this recently redesigned blog spills the beans on local politics, news and happenings
  2. Dallas Blog – an independent online newspaper focused on Dallas politics and local issues.
  3. Larry James’ Urban Daily – lots of engaged readers tune in daily to read and comment on stories penned by Central Dallas Ministries CEO about issues affecting the urban poor.
  4. We Shot JR – one of the city’s best music blogs, with daily updates on dance parties, gallery openings, and album/concert reviews, along with videos, pics, and audio samples.
  5. Dallas South – This blog focuses on national and local Dallas politics, from a progressive African American perspective.

Up and Coming Blogs in Dallas (in no particular order)

  • Trey Garrison – a side project of D Magazine’s contributing writer, Mr. Garrison supplies readers with his daily take on local headlines.
  • The Raiser’s Razor – resources and ideas for those seeking help with fundraising and grant writing.
  • Kera Art + Seek – a community haven for discussions about avant-garde cinema, dance, and gallery events around Dallas and North Texas.
  • Dallas.org – Dallas’s unofficial homepage and the brain child of Dallas maverick Allen Gwinn, his site exposes corruption within local government and brings contentious issues to light.
  • Life Outside the Bubble – a mostly video blog covering the Dallas/Ft. Worth music scene from blogging veteran Cindy Chaffin.

Most Talked About Stories:

Submit your blog to be included in Outside.in’s Dallas listings.

Have your own Dallas Top 5 or want the Professor of Blogiology to come to your town? Raise your hand and we’ll call on you, or you can leave a note in the comments section.

Methodology: Our rankings track local buzz by analyzing a mix of variables including: total number of posts, location of posts, links from other sites in the community, and feedback from Outside.in members. Bloggiest Neighborhoods/Top Blogs, past 30 days; Most Talked About Stories, past 7 days.

12
Nov 08

Dept of Blogiology 101: Phoenix

Posted by Nina in General / News — View Comments

Next up for our Blogiology class is Phoenix, AZ.  Attendance in this class has been going through the roof, so you’ve certainly been reading each week as we explore top neighborhoods, blogs, and bloggers in cities around the U.S. In previous posts we’ve covered Durham, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Portland, Philadelphia, Buffalo, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Boston.

So, what’s been going on in Phoenix this week?  Bloggers there are talking about a young murderer standing trial, bank robber goes on a spree, new eyes in the sky watch for speeders, Ritz Carlton may wrangle its way into the neighborhood, and death at the hands of a drunk driver. Want more local Phoenix knowledge? Read on.

Bloggiest Phoenix Neighborhoods:

Top Phoenix Blogs:

  1. Downtown Phoenix Journal – downtown Phoenix news, events, and real estate news.
  2. Phx 411 – your source for city news, sports, attractions and dining.
  3. Blog for Arizona – outspoken political blog covering the democratic perspective on city and state issues.
  4. Bright Side of the Sun – the most blinged out blog dedicated to the Phoenix Suns basketball team. Up- to-the-minute tweets, a map of all upcoming games, and a user comment section make this a #1 destination for Suns fans.

Up and Coming Blogs in Phoenix (in no particular order)

  • PHX Rail Food – in anticipation of the soon-to-be opened Phoenix light rail system, this blogger has been assembling restaurant reviews of places along its route.
  • East Valley Living – this blog lives up to the true definition of citizen journalism by providing attention to really local news in the East Valley region of Phoenix that mainstream media often ignores.
  • The Soop – a gorgeous site dedicated to trendy fashion, music, and art in Phoenix.
  • Arizona Coffee – look no further for the best brew in town. 
  • Bookmans – this site serves as home to the ever popular Bookmans store, which hosts community meetings, classes, music events and of course also sells lots and lots of books!

Most Talked About Stories:

Submit your blog to be included in Outside.in’s Phoenix listings.

Have your own Phoenix Top 5 or want the Professor of Blogiology to come to your town? Raise your hand and we’ll call on you, or you can leave a note in the comments section.

Methodology: Our rankings track local buzz by analyzing a mix of variables including: total number of posts, location of posts, links from other sites in the community, and feedback from Outside.in members. Bloggiest Neighborhoods/Top Blogs, past 30 days; Most Talked About Stories, past 7 days.

11
Nov 08

API Developer Video

Posted by Cory in Announcements / News — View Comments

On behalf of the Outside.in developer team, I am proud to announce the launch of the Outside.in API. We’re opening up our vast location-based news database and are really excited to see all of the cool mashups developers will create!

Here’s our API team (myself included) giving it a brief intro: 


11
Nov 08

Announcing the New Outside.in API: Plug In to the News Around You

Posted by john in Announcements / General / News — View Comments

We’re excited to announce that today Outside.in is launching our new API, the first ever to make up-to-the-minute, location-based news available to everyone programmatically.

The API is based on our “news around you” feature, Radar, which means that to use it, you just send us an exact location, and we return all of the latest news stories, blog posts, Twitter tweets and more located within 1,000 feet of that point.  Then pick another location, and we send you all of the latest web content for that point.  Then hit us again for that same location, and we send you an update with the newest, freshest content in that immediate area.  And on and on like that.

There are so many ways you could apply this API.  In particular, this calls out for use in the exploding field of mobile applications.  Building a mobile app that gives users content based on their current location?  Make it better by adding the news around them from the Outside.in API.  Or local news sites could develop on it: want to give your readers a little bit of really local news?  Tap into the Outside.in API and deliver a unique local experience for each one of them.  Or add local content to your Facebook app, your Twitter app, or just about any other social/status software.

To give people a solid example of how our API works we gave two Outside.in developers free reign to create whatever they wanted with it in two days’ time.  The app they built is called near.ly.  It takes your location, searches for the latest web content around you, and delivers those stories to your Twitter feed in the form of bit.ly links.  So now you can get all of the news around you from the comfort of your Twitter account!

When you start to consider adding tools like Firefox’s Geode, Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, or the upcoming Windows 7 to the mix, you begin to get a picture of what the future of local content browsing looks like.  And it looks really cool.

This of course is just the tip of the API iceberg for us.  We’re opening up more ways for partners and developers to access our vast stores of location-based news and web content.  Stay tuned.  If you’ve got feedback on this API or ideas for what you’d like to see next, please write to us. We’d love to hear from you.

Enjoy!

10
Nov 08

Next Wave of Growth

Posted by mark in Announcements / General — View Comments

In the past few months we have experienced hypergrowth in our hyperlocal business.

Our audience is up 400% year to date and growing.  We’ve launched Radar, a revolutionary consumer product and GeoToolkit and StoryMaps, products being used already by more than 1,200 local content creators.

We are also cranking on the next wave of enhancements.  Stay tuned for some exciting things in the very near future.

A lot of the credit for our growth has to go to Cory Forsyth.  Cory is one of our three founders and has been our CTO, as well as our de facto lead engineer, sysadmin, dba and troubleshooter all while helping to build out a team of talented engineers.

I’ve always felt that one of the hardest thing to do is to come up with an idea and actually build it from scratch.  It requires a special skill set.  In the past two years, Cory has demonstrated he is a master at this.

Now we find ourselves hitting an inflection point in our business where we are starting to grow and can see “massive scale” in our near future.

In order to achieve that massive scale, Cory and I have decided to look for a new full-time CTO to join our team.  This person will work with Cory, the engineering team and management to plot and execute our next wave of growth.  Thankfully, Cory isn’t going anywhere.  He will work closely with our new CTO as our Founder & VP of Engineering and is an integral part of “what’s next.”  We’re lucky to have him.

So, who should be our new CTO?

Well, for starters, it should be someone who:

  • Has “been there and done that” before.  Someone who has built massive scalable online businesses before and looks at our growth and thinks “that’s a nice start, but this should be huuuuuge”.  Think hundreds of millions of pageviews and billions of impressions per month;
  • Has experience with advanced semantic and NLP algorithms;
  • Understands online media and advertising;
  • Knows and appreciates the GeoWeb and how place and location data can make the world a better place — mapping applications, APIs, mobile platforms, etc.. are a definite plus;
  • Is a hands-on team-builder and can build bulletproof battle-tested applications;
  • Can plan software, systems, hardware and architecture (different options for hosting/serving, database and code base) for future growth; and
  • Wants to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty and have fun with a dynamic team.

So, we’re looking to find the perfect addition to our amazing team and would appreciate any ideas or suggestions.  Please email to jobs@outside.in with your resume or LinkedIn profile.

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