Curated by: Luigi Canali De Rossi
 


Saturday, May 28, 2005

The News Is NowPublic: See The News You Want To See

"Technology has broken the corporate news monopoly. Digital cameras, camera phones, blogs, and RSS put the tools of the news trade into the hands of the public, and now real news comes from real people everywhere."

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Photo credit: Nick Winchester

Just a few hours ago I have had the pleasure to have a great conversation online with Michael Tippet, who, out of beautiful Vancouver has recently launched a grassroots world news coverage service where anyone can have a voice.

NowPublic is in fact much more than that.

Users can in fact suggest news stories of all kinds, either by picking on existing mainstream media news or by writing and submitting their own ones.

One of the key ideas behind PublicNow is the one of nominating news items for extra coverage. As news are submitted other NowPublic users can vote for them while raising their visibility in the news space. Other users can then add their additional coverage or commentary on the selected news assignment and even add their own footage to it.

Not only.

Thanks to the effective integration of a Creative Commons license NowPublic makes all of its content, including text, images, rich-media clips and RSS feeds completely open to re-use and syndication on other sites and media.

Yes, you have read that right. You can use NowPublic as an extra reference image library in which you can tap for thousands of images already made available under a Creative Commons license and requiring only due credit and attribution from your end.

Not enough to get you excited?

There's more:

(or just listen to my good conversation with Michael Tippet of NowPublic right here: 42 mins. Click play to listen to it.)

 

 

NowPublic allows any independent online publisher, news site or blog to contribute directly to this service by allowing direct inclusion and syndication of your own RSS feeds.

It's open source news, and even in its infancy it's richer, faster, more powerful than the infotainment it replaces.

NowPublic leverages the power of folksonomies and allows you to "tag" news items according to your own preferred keywords. As in del.icio.us, each new tag generates a new "channel" that can be subscribed to. Users drive classification by enriching the access points from which any content can be found.

An integrated search engine facility allows searching both the news as well as footage contributed by individuals. Like Ourmedia or the Internet Archive, NowPublic provides unlimited storage space to its users at absolutely no additional cost.

With NowPublic you can now demand coverage of the stories you want others to pay attention to, and where you want others to contribute to your own research.

In education, research, activism and media content creation there is great opportunity indeed for systems that provide this kind of functionality as grassroots public demand can now drive serious collaborative research investigations.

Story ideas can now come from people on the ground, insiders, community leaders.

Yes, it may take a little time to gain enough momentum and attention to have this fluid community be able to achieve its mission, but this is where we start.

NowPublic makes it possible to finally see real footage comeng from eyewitnesses, citizen reporters, individuals like you, are close to the story or passionate about the issue you want covered.

Particularly interesting appears also the opportunity offered to digital image creators and photographers. Digital photographers can use NowPublic to find out what stories bloggers and other journalists are breaking and provide matching footage for it.

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In the truest sense of the word NowPublic enables individuals, students and news activists to make the news, by providing an open platform in which everyone can contribute and participate in a collaborative fashion.

NowPublic further protects your personal digital creations by using a unique format which ensures that your images get credit no matter where your footage is used. With this approach anyone who sees your visual photography work can contact you, thank you, praise you, ask you to take an assignment, or request a hi-res version of your photo.

It's about time you take control of your news.

Give it a try. It's free.



Listen in to my Good conversation with Michael Tippet founder of NowPublic.
42 mins.
Click play to listen to it.

 
 
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posted by Robin Good on Saturday, May 28 2005, updated on Tuesday, May 5 2015

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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