EveryBlock Makes Code Available

Hyperlocal news and info site EveryBlock has released its source code online.

This means thousands of news websites around the world can now make use of the technology to power their own location-based news services.

It is this code which has enabled EveryBlock (launched in January 2008) to provide a hyperlocal news and info service for some 15 cities across the US.

Visitors can search for news by postcode or area and can get access to civic records as well as breaking news stories.

The company also has a number of partnership deals with news groups, including the New York Times.

Announcing the release of the code on their blog, the EveryBlock founders said: “We hope this extensive code base helps spark lots of great work.”

Find out more on the Editors Weblog.

[HT – Martin Stabe]

Telling The G20 Story With Social Media

News reporting via Twitter and AudioBoo became the norm last week as journalists used social media tools to tell the story of the G20 Summit in London.

The majority of the mainstream media got in on the action as social media software provided an ideal way for field-based reporters to provide real-time updates on events at the summit and on the streets of the City.

According to BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones: “It does seem as though just about everyone involved in G20 - from the politicians to the journalists, from bloggers to demonstrators - has been snapping, filming recording everything in site and uploading it to the web to share with the world.”

Several online newspapers provided coverage using CoverItLive blogs, including Times Online and Sky News.

On the Sky live blog, correspondents sent text updates and links to photos uploaded to TwitPic.

Meanwhile, the Times Online’s live blog featured embedded photos and eye-witness posts from members of the public.



On Guardian.co.uk, award-winning blogger Dave Hill posted regular updates to his London blog about the action on the ground at the Bank of England.

And the BBC offered multimedia coverage through its Live Map, which linked to geotagged video, text and photographic content.



The BBC also pulled together links to all its G20 related content on a Live Text Page which featured links to news articles and blog posts from journalists as they were published.

An abundance of content from citizen journalists appeared throughout the day on content-sharing sites such as Flickr, and a group of students from London’s City University used their mobiles and social media tools to provide extensive coverage of the street protests (HT – cybersoc.com).

For more on this, journalism.co.uk and the BBC’s dot.life blog have round-ups of how social media was used by the mainstream and alternative media during last week’s events.

BBC Relaunches Mobile Site

The BBC has unveiled a beta version of its latest mobile site boasting new customisation and localisation features.

Users can adapt the homepage so they can directly access their favourite content and can also create a localised version of the news, weather and TV sections.

In addition, the site appears in different forms and image sizes depending upon the users’ handsets and network capabilities.



The site “is the first milestone in an ambitious roadmap for the development of our service to be contextual, social, personal, immediate, device and location aware,” said Ulyssa MacMillan, executive producer for BBC Mobile.

Richard Titus, BBC future media controller, also stated that the corporation’s next step would be to adopt locative media tools for its mobile offerings.

He told The Guardian: “In a way, the BBC is one of the safest organisations to share your location with.

“We take privacy very seriously and there’s no malicious or commercial intent - we just want to make the experience better.”