901am

New Media News Every Morning

Create Your Own Community on Mixx

By Leave a Comment

I don’t know about your blog, but I pull a nice chunk from Mixx – something I can’t say about Digg. I now the site is stirring things up again with their self-dubbed “Ning for social media.”

Users are now able to build their own Mixx community site using a personalized subdomain. These microsites feature the content and design that the creator fashions.

Just like any other social community, members may join the group and submit stories of interest directly to the group. Of course, they may still submit stories to all Mixx users too.

Network creators select tags that will automatically pull sories from the main Mixx stream, meaning your part of th eMixx universe won’t starve for content.

Rounded out with a message board and stats feature, there are even awards for top submitters.

If you want to Make Work Better, you can check out my Jobacle Mixx community.

Originally posted on June 25, 2008 @ 9:06 am

PoliRock Marries Politics and Music

By 1 Comment

Like it or not, music and politics go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Understanding the marriage is PoliRock.com, a social network that is looking to define the greatest political bands of all time.

Both musicians and fans can create personal profiles and do all of the usual stuff: create profiles, upload pictures, interact and so on. What sets PoliRock apart is that they are turning unsigned acts into candidates.

Each band can campaign for votes. The group without a record deal that garners the most votes by Election Day (November 4, 2008), will win a prize pack including $5,000.

There’s also a place for major label bands and indie label bands. Each category is ranked by votes, meaning that the more votes you receive, the higher on the list you appear.

Users can also assign a band with a political label. For example, PoliRock currently lists U2 as a “Republican” band. While I don’t necessarily love this aspect of the site, it’s sure to get some people talking.

Originally posted on June 23, 2008 @ 9:52 am

GOOG-411 Comes to Canada

By 2 Comments

You probably still won’t find what you’re looking for, eh.

The Globe and Mail in Toronto is reporting that Google has been indexing businesses up north in a push to move their GOOG-411 service live past American borders.

The Maple Leaf country is often a second-class citizen when it comes to getting the latest technology.

Personally, I NEVER have had luck with the Google service. In fact, I’m pretty certain that one day they will release recordings of my rants and raves.

I’m not sure why, but it’s by far the worst voice-recognition system I’ve encountered in recent memory. Maybe I just talk funny.

Sorry Canada, there’s not much to be excited about. Not even a Stanley Cup.

Originally posted on June 22, 2008 @ 7:32 pm

CrunchBase Upgrades: Maps, Jobs, Milstones and More

By Leave a Comment

It’s normally TechCrunch that reports the news on everything happening on the Web. Well today, they’re making news of their own with some seriously impressive improvements to Crunchbase,
their tech startup blue pages.

According to TechCrunch the new features include:

Maps: Company and financial organization headquarters are now geocoded and locatable on an interactive map using the Google Maps API.

Advanced Search: Browse by City, State, Zip Code, or Country. Or choose an arbitrary location and map all of the results within a certain range (e.g., all the startups within 10 miles of Sydney, the 165 companies in Manhattan, or the VCs on Sand Hill Road).

Jobs: CrunchBoard job listings are now shown on company pages. You’ll now see, for example, that Digg is hiring. With this additional functionality, and our LinkedIn API integration, we hope CrunchBase will become an ever-more important research tool for job seekers.

Milestones: Milestones is our newest and most experimental feature on CrunchBase. It was inspired by our writing team, which receives many press releases with titles like “Service X hits the 1 Million user mark,” or “Company Y hires new CEO.”

While these news items don’t always make TechCrunch’s front page, we wanted a place to highlight them in CrunchBase, so we created a lightweight data type called Milestones. It’s pretty simple: each milestone has a date, description, and source (if available somewhere on the net).

The new features are smart, and above all, necessary. Who needs Hoovers!

Originally posted on June 22, 2008 @ 8:13 pm

Flood Alerts for U.S. Rivers

By Leave a Comment

Using data from the U.S. Geological Survey, Weather Underground now shares data on American rivers, potentially giving residents advance warning of a flood.

Each river is color-coded on a map, allowing users to easily identify conditions. Among them:

Dry/wet percentile
Flow Rate
Current Stage
Forecast Stage
Flood Stage

Access the river information here.

This key info is displayed as a layer on the WunderMapâ„¢, a visual display of weather layers that are plotted and overlaid on a map interface.

“We have created this product to help communities in the US threatened by flooding,” said Alan Steremberg, President and co-founder of Weather Underground. “People will easily be able to find the data they need to assess the threat to their homes and businesses. We have brought the product to market as quickly as possible in light of the many flood alerts currently in place in the middle of the country.”

This service is free. Whether its Mother Nature or external sources causing the problem, Weather Underground keeps you up to date.

Originally posted on June 18, 2008 @ 9:00 am