links for 2010-01-11

There could also be layers to this – free to view crowdsourced travel maps for example using real-time updates from readers. If you’re happy with this UGC overview, then you don’t have to pay; but if you want accurate, personal information on your travel routes, there’s a fee.

Let the people in so you can find the wells that need digging. We can poke around the surface, but we have lives and jobs — other missions. Watch where we go, and help us achieve. The rewards will be our trust and the money of businesses that want to learn from and educate through that flow. Same way Twitter and Google are expanding now, that should be happening in the news business. Permalink to this paragraph

Demand generates as many as 4,000 videos and articles a day on eHow, Youtube and elsewhere. Topics are chosen with help from real-time (that phrase again) algorithms that shows what people are searching for, though the process has a human element too.

It rejects entirely the traditional “we know what’s best” paternalistic media attitude – which may help explain why so many people in the traditional media have their knives out for it.

Multimedia journalist Adam Westbrook has today released a new ebook about hyperlocal newsgathering, drawing on his experiences as a local reporter.

Its introductory price is £4.99 and Westbrook is optimistic people will pay: “I’ve purposefully kept it at a low price so its not a big investment even for someone just toying with the idea of starting a hyperlocal blog,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

Today the hub works in three ways – it listens to chatter and gauges public reaction on the BBC’s own forums as well as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it sends out requests for content (pictures, video and personal reaction) on breaking news stories through the BBC News website and its dedicated Twitter feeds and it filters and verifies content sent in by people.