links for 2011-07-13

What if you could really let your fingers do the walking? What if you could find stuff, near you, literally at the touch of a finger? Then, maybe act on it, scheduling your life, buying things and sharing your finds and plans with others?

That’s the dream that the MediaNews’ new made-for-the tablet, TapIn taps into. Potentially – and I cannot emphasize that word too much — it may become a prototypical product for the news industry, pointing a new way out of the hollowing-out landscape into which the news industry has meandered.

Finally, you should host hangout sessions with your readers and reporters and sources. At least try it. It may prove to be unwieldy and you might go back to something like UStream or CoverItLive chats. But I think it would be great to have a reporter interviewing a source or answering questions, either on one screen or on separate screens in different locations, and allowing the readers to participate real-time and not just as a chat room. It might be slightly awkward, and you might get the one crazy person who interrupts, but you’ll have that anywhere. It might produce some interesting conversations and even break some news, though.

To re-quote Annie, quoting Katie …the aim “is to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavour to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again”.

Life is sometimes easier with a little structure and there are rules to the project:

There’s just this whole level of news that’s important to people that’s not really being covered. Neighborhood-level, quality-of-life, that sort of thing. That’s the role we’re trying to fill.