Mapping Mash-ups

I was listening to a podcast of WNYC’s Radio Lab from 2004 themed “Contact” and had a segment about the Howard Dean presidential campaign and the website Meetup.com. At the time they talked very highly and hopefully about the potential of meetup.com, but even though the NYC Chihuahua Owner Meetup group still boasts over 700 members, I haven’t heard meetup causing much of a stir since Howard Dean left the presidental race.

The most interesting part of the story of Meetup, which seems to have came and gone, but the hope that the Radio Lab hosts and Harvard Professor (and author of Bowling Alone) Robert Putnam got from Meetup. The internet was supposed to be this dislocated place, a global community not tied to location, but here was Meetup, allowing 5 Bon Jovi fans in NYC to meet up at the Hard Rock Cafe and discuss their idol (okay, so no Bon Jovi fans showed up for the Bon Jovi Meetup that a Radio Lab producer tried to attend).

This localized internet use reminded me of a current mash-up that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this year, and that is the use of Google Map apps to construct personalized or communityized maps and posting them on the internet. The first of this type of mash-up that I saw (though not the first of its kinds, most likely) was from Cambridge Community Television. CCTV’s Media Map located specific local media in very specific locations, which I think is the #1 amazing asset of public and cable access television. You’re not watching a sitcom being broadcast around the world, but you are watching a show about a particular cultural performance in a particular space near your home. CCTV’s Media Map places these videos, performances, and discussions in their neighborhoods on the map so that CCTV viewers can view the map and see videos organize spacially. This change to community media, the ability to present the videos spacially on a map is really great, and I really think highlights the importance and specificity of the productions.

If you log into Google and go to the Google Maps page, you can select “My Maps” and create your own Google Map. In the bubbles that pop up when you click on one of your markers you can paste in html code, including the html embed code from Blip.tv, Google Video, or Youtube. Or html embed codes from many other websites which will allow you to add things to blogs. You can also map locations, shaded shapes, or lines so that you can specifiy different types of information on the maps. Another interesting Google Mapping project that I found while I was writing this post is safe2pee.org. This website maps (and provides a city tag cloud) of gender neutral or ungendered bathrooms in different cities. The city tag cloud will show you cities with more recorded gender neutral public bathrooms, and you are able to submit additional bathrooms to the site to add gender neutral bathrooms in your city. Feel free to post additional interesting internet mapping projects, or mash-up projects which localize the internet in interesting ways in the comment field.

Your Skull, In Stereo

This is the audio story which helped to inspire this blog. Most Monday mornings on the bus from Minneapolis to Saint Paul I listen to a podcast of WNYC’s On The Media.

This weeks episode had a story about a new technology which is being tested with a billboard in New York. When someone on the street walks by sensors (or points which the billboard is sensing?) it sends a very directed broadcast (I don’t really understand the technology) which is able to use the person’s skull to resonate an audio message. The billboard is about a new TV show about paranormal activity, so the audio it sends you makes it seem like you are hearing voices advertising the show. There is no way to plug your ears to block out the audio because the voices are…in your head.

They interviewed someone who is researching this technology who talked about possible uses in the future and uses that are already being used. They include directed advertising in malls or cops using the technology for crowd control. Very loud noises could be directed to individuals in a crowd/protest/etc, incapacitating one of the organizers. The researcher made some comment about him not being comfortable with the idea, but that who knows, in twenty years it could be the norm. Ahh.

You can listen to the story here, http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2007/12/14/segments/90482

Trying blogging again.

I have tried to keep blogs before about myself, and I never end up keeping up with them, or never knowing what to say. So, here is an attempt to have a blog on a theme. Inspired by my co-worker Mary (who has been starting/working on some blogs this year: technolution.wordpress.com and amerimom.wordpress.com) and a creepy story that I heard on WNYC’s On The Media, I decided to keep track of creepy media and advertising, cool hunting (you should watch Frontline: The Merchants of Cool, if you haven’t), and media literacy resources and curriculum I find along the way. I think that I will be able to go strong in the beginning, I might have a backlog of these ideas in my head, so…stay tuned (or rss feeded).