OpenStreetMap captures crowdsourcing in striking interactive graphics
OpenStreetMap shows off the last eight years of crowdsourcing map development in a series of striking images. Read more »
Comcast mimics Fon, creating a crowdsourced hotspot network in millions of homes
Comcast plans to crowdsource its Wi-Fi network, turning millions of home gateways into public hotspots. It’s a revolutionary, and probably controversial, move that could benefit its customers immensely — as long as it doesn’t pimp out their broadband connections. Read more »
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Rethinking innovation: How to manage ideas systematically
Innovation activity is growing across many more markets than in the past and at the same time forming narrower markets. Narrow innovation leads to what we call systematic innovation. This report defines that terms, discusses how it is a key driver of innovation for large companies, and offers advice on how to manage ideas. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
How you and I could become nodes in the internet of things
photo: Shutterstock / higyou
A group of French researchers believe that the sensors and transmitters we wear will route and relay data, not just collect it. We won’t just be connected to the network. We’ll be the network. Read more »
Crowdsourcing is here to stay — now it’s about building tools for networked journalism
photo: Flickr / Christian Scholz
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen says that many of the cultural barriers to doing “networked journalism” have been lowered, and he is trying to help media outlets develop smart tools and ways of making use of crowdsourcing. Read more at paidContent »
Google Glass crowdsources its internet connection thanks to Open Garden hack
photo: Image courtesy of Google.
Open Garden hopes to make Google Glass — and any wearable computer — a node on its growing crowdsourced mesh network, and it’s asking for Google’s help to make it happen. Read more »
Three things that Reddit did right during the Boston bombings and why that matters
photo: Shutterstock / wellphoto
While much of the attention during and after the Boston bombings focused on how one Reddit thread got things wrong, there were other important parts of the community that were doing good — and even doing something approaching journalism. Read more at paidContent »
Reddit + Boston: Journalism gets better when more people are doing it
photo: Flickr / Christian Scholz
While both Twitter and Reddit have come under fire for distributing incorrect information about the Boston bombings, mainstream outlets have done so as well. In a real-time news environment, having more sources is ultimately better. Read more at paidContent »
How to make your mark in professional basketball at 5′ 9″
Vasu Kulkarni isn’t an NBA star; he couldn’t even make an Ivy League basketball team. But Kulkarni’s startup Krossover is trying to change the nature of coaching, scouting and even fandom by testing people’s on-the-field sports intelligence. Read more »
Where will T-Mobile launch LTE first? Probably in these eight cities
Thanks to OpenSignal’s crowdsourced testing app, we’re getting an early preview of where T-Mobile’s LTE will go live: Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York City, San Diego, Seattle and the Bay Area. Read more »
How coding contests can be better at solving problems than Harvard
photo: Albert Chau
Harvard recently threw a tough genomics problem to TopCoder’s crowdsourced community and discovered the contest not only revealed a much broader field of investigation but provided a high level of motivation to get the problem solved. Read more »
Crowdsourced location data firm Grafetee opens up to businesses and enterprise users
Grafetee, which makes it extremely easy to collect and display location-based data, is now offering more customizable, API-driven services to paying users, from bloggers to local authorities. Read more »
Report: AT&T bests Verizon in raw 4G speed but still lags in LTE coverage
New RootMetrics tests shows that AT&T’s LTE networks are on average 4.3 Mbps faster than Verizon’s when downloading data. What Verizon lacks in speed, though, it makes up for in coverage. Read more »
When it comes to getting news on Twitter, you are who you follow?
Is picking Twitter accounts to follow the same as picking which cable television host to trust? Journalists who’ve reported from the Middle East and relied on Twitter to receive their news say maybe. Read more »
Open Garden unleashes the full force of its crowdsourced mobile mesh app
photo: Open Garden
Open Garden is now supporting multi-hop mesh networking in its app. That means your devices won’t just share connectivity with each other but with your neighbors’ devices and with their neighbors’ devices as well. Read more »
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Best practices in optimizing content for social engagement
Optimizing content is crucial as customers migrate from being passive recipients to becoming active contributors. This opportunity presents a fresh set of challenges, not only for those in traditional broadcast industries but also for content managers and enterprise leaders. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Sweden boasts the world’s fastest 4G speeds; US ranks a lowly 8th
photo: Shutterstock / Inq
The U.S. may have the most developed LTE infrastructure of any country in the world, but it’s networks are no means the fastest. Seven other countries scored higher in an OpenSignal study of 4G speeds. Read more »
Why a DT investment in Fon would be a smart move
Deutsche Telekom is considering investing in Fon, the crowdsourced Wi-Fi provider. Though the deal is far from certain, DT could benefit greatly from a close relationship with Fon’s millions-strong Wi-Fi community. Read more »
Open Garden teams with TextMe to connect the unconnected tablet
photo: Open Garden
Open Garden needs scale, TextMe needs a means for its customers to reach the Internet. These two might just be a match made in heaven. Read more »
Can the creation of music be crowdsourced? Ericsson and DJ Avicii think it can
Swedish DJ and producer Avicii has agreed to work with network builder Ericsson to experiment with a crowdsourced music composition on. Starting on Wednesday, the public will be able to submit audio tracks that could wind up in Avicii’s new single. Read more »
Researchers say Waze data could help prevent accidents
photo: Shutterstock / isaravut
A group of researchers from an Israeli university used data from Waze to determine the country’s most-accident-prone areas and how they correlate, or not, with a notable police presence. It’s just one of many efforts using ballooning data from drivers and devices to try and make sense of city traffic. Read more »
Transit app Moovit takes a page from Waze’s crowdsourcing playbook
photo: Moovit
Moovit is trying to be the Waze of public transit by offering a crowd-sourced transportation app for bus and train commuters. The system hopes to provide more accurate estimated time of arrivals and better updates on upcoming travel conditions. Read more »
How startup Alegion aims to humanize crowdsourcing
photo: Flickr user Christian Scholz
Crowdsourcing is a great idea in theory, but it hasn’t really lived up to its potential, says Alegion CEO Nathaniel Gates. He thinks with some fundamental tweaks, Alegion can change all that for the better. Read more »
How everyday people can help fight disease with data
photo: Shutterstock / wongwean
Everywhere you look, there’s another option for sharing your medical data in the name of the greater good. These efforts are not for nothing: Because of there scale and geographic reach, crowdsourced data banks have the potential to revolutionze how medical research is conducted. Read more »
BillGuard brings financial protection to Lemon mobile wallet
photo: BillGuard
BillGuard, a crowd-sourced financial protection service that flags suspicious activity for consumers, is taking its services to mobile wallet app Lemon, which has 2.5 million users on iOS and Android. Now, Lemon users can check their balance on stored cards, see recent transactions and suspicious activity. Read more »
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Examining the rise of crowd labor platforms in 2012
Crowd labor is outsourced information work that can be provisioned automatically. It’s ideally, inexpensive, on demand, and elastic. Platforms providing such services are on the rise in 2012, promising customers lower labor costs in the short term and higher-quality output in the long term. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Hurricane Sandy and Twitter as a self-cleaning oven for news
photo: Flickr user Petteri Sulonen
Critics of social media like to focus on how much fake news gets circulated during events like Hurricane Sandy, but Twitter and other services are also quick to correct those kinds of reports, and have become part of an expanding ecosystem of real-time news. Read more »
Europe’s also trying crowdsourced law-making, but is it just too big?
photo: Shutterstock/Imoloko
It’s one thing to try crowdsourced legislation in relatively small, cohesive societies such as those in Finland and Iceland, but a whole different ballgame when you try it on a population of half a billion people. Read more »
InfoArmy raises $17.3 for crowd-sourced competitive intelligence reports
photo: InfoArmy
InfoArmy, a startup that creates crowd-sourced competitive intelligence reports for the iPad, has raised $17.3 million from Norwest Venture partners and Trinity Ventures. InfoArmy was founded Jim Fowler, who sold his previous startup Jigsaw to Salesforce for $175. Read more »
Icelanders approve their crowdsourced constitution
Iceland’s citizens were given a chance to help forge a new constitution for their country through Facebook and Twitter, so it’s not surprising that they backed the resulting draft. Now it’s over to the politicians. Read more »
NASA tries to free creativity with Big Data Challenge
NASA and a couple other government agencies have kicked off a series of TopCoder challenges designed to find innovative solutions to the government’s big data problems. The first contest is all about making disparate, incompatible data sets usable and actually valuable across agencies. Read more »
FixYa’s new iPhone app lets you ask repair questions on video
Are you lost for words when dealing with the inner workings of common household appliances? Then you might want to check out FixYa’s new iPhone app, which gives users the option to record their problems in video, so they don’t have to write about “that thing.” Read more »
Here comes everybody: Why AirBnB is so disruptive
photo: Flickr user Christian Scholz
I was an AirBnB sceptic for a long time, but trying the service made me realize just how disruptive it could be — and how it also shares a lot of the same characteristics of other disruptive businesses that are powered by the social web. Read more »
Nokia tries ‘you show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ for parking data
Nokia Research Center has developed a new system for finding parking spots that rewards users for sharing information on primo spots. It’s a smart approach to a common problem, as users might be more willing to share if they know they’ll get privileged information in return. Read more »
Finland is about to start using crowdsourcing to create new laws
The Finnish government has approved the technology behind a new ‘Open Ministry’ platform, which will act as a hub for citizens who want new laws voted on in the country’s parliament. But could that work elsewhere? Read more »
US government and Stack Exchange launch crowdsourced patent process
There may be light at the end of the tunnel for America’s beleaguered patent system thanks to a new partnership between the patent office and expert Q&A site Stack Exchange. The new system, which goes live this morning, invites members of the public to submit prior art. Read more »
Whoa! Amanda Palmer reverses course, pays crowdsourced musicians
photo: Flickr/Zawesome
Knock me down with a feather! After a week of sometimes not-so-civil discourse, alt-rock icon Amanda Palmer says she’s started paying the artists who volunteered to back up her band on its “Theatre is Evil” tour. Read more »
Duolingo raises $15M for language learning and crowdsourced translation
Duolingo, a language learning and crowdsourced translation platform from Recaptcha founder Luis von Ahn, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from New Enterprise Associates and Union Square Ventures. Read more »
David Carr on newspapers, Twitter and citizen journalism
Despite all the gloom in the newspaper business, which he says will likely still have to suffer more pain and possible bankruptcies, New York Times media writer David Carr says he believes that thanks to the internet we are living in a “golden age for journalism.” Read more »
Amanda Palmer brouhaha exposes the dark side of crowdsourcing
photo: Flickr/Zawesome
Amanda Palmer, an alt rock fan favorite who’s worked Kickstarter and social media masterfully in her career, may have mis-stepped when she posted a plea for free musicians to back up her band in its current tour. Or else it was a publicity stunt. Read more »
