Google Maps enjoy their Second Life

Google Maps enjoy their Second Life

Ever since I attended "Beyond Broadcast '08--Mapping Public Media" I got interested in cyber cartography and online mapping applications. After exploring this new social media genre--map mashup, I realized that collaborative mapping is a powerful tool for the Web-based PR, marketing, and advertising initiatives, among others.

A large number of interesting examples of geo mashups can be found at an informative site called Google Maps Mania, "an unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps."


However, organizations willing to experiment and promote their products and services through map mashups in virtual worlds, can do that effectively in Second Life. These virtual map mashups are often called slashups.

I recently became a SL resident and my adventurous avatar PRometeus Magic began exploring this new world. What he discovered is an exciting place called the Virtual Briefing Hub (226, 19, 399), a part of the Daden Prime (128, 128, 22) and a fascinating example of a slashup.



This is a creation of an U.K. based organization--Daden Limited. PRometeus spent almost a whole weekend exploring their place. Luckily, he met a Virtual Hub host Corro Moseley aka David Burden and asked him a few questions about the project. Here is a transcript of their chat:

• Could you please tell me something about the Daden Limited?

We are a virtual worlds consultancy, based in Birmingham UK. We have a core UK team, but we work with sub-contractors across the globe to deliver client projects.

• What is the Virtual Briefing Hub and how can SL residents use it?

The hub has been designed for Birmingham City Council to use to help show stakeholders in the city how virtual worlds technology can be used--particularly for planning, regeneration, infrastructure management, education, and health. It uses our Google maps interface, and as such any residentcan use it to view Google Maps. We'll also be making the hub available at a couple of other locations, including the Teen Grid, and we're also working on a consumer version. You can pan and zoom your way across the globe down to individual street and building level, and can also use a find command to jump to a specific location--if it's in the gazateer. You can also bring up any RSS feed or KML feed and have the system plot the data for you across the map.

• What elements are mashed together in this application?

Google Maps, RSS and KML feeds and a geo-coding service.

• How important are geo mashups in SL and what's their role/potential?

We think that SL is an ideal collaborative environment, and a great place to visualize data. Using something like the hub people/scientists/engineers/planners from across the city, country or the globe can get together to view data and discuss implications in a way which is far more visceral than all looking at different PCs and trying to discuss it on the phone.

• What virtual projects are you working on right now?

We are working on a training system for care home managers using artificial avatars, and another for paramedics using the Medbiquitous Virtual Patient standard to drive training exercises in Second Life.
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I just want to add that this virtual mashup is a wonderful PR/Marketing tool that promotes Birmingham, UK in an innovative and creative way. I was amazed when I clicked on the commands and found myself on the streets of a 3D city, among 3D people and buildings, or mashed in a video clip emerging from the mapped layers of data. Thanks to this wonderful slashup, I discovered Birmingham is a cool city, worth visiting in both the real and Second Life.

What do you think?

My First Twebinar

My First Twebinar

Today I attended my first Twebinar and I’d like to share my thoughts with you. As its name says, it is a combination of Webinar and Twitter. What is it exactly? It is a simultaneous webcast of video conversations with some of the big names in the social media sphere and a Twitter community livestream commentary of the conversations.

It was organized by Radian 6 (and supported by the Society for New Communications Research and the New Communications Forum) and announced as a modern communication mash up. It was both funny and useful to connect with social media folks, as it is a great initiative in itself but I have some suggestions for the future Twebinars.

First, this online social media meeting was not a real mash up. In order to be a mash up, as it is explained here, a form or creation has to be a new independent application developed by combining two or more Web sites. These mashed Web sites cease to exist separately from the moment of their unification and they are becoming an integral whole. Therefore, today’s Twebinar was not a real mash up. It was just a combination (a good one though) of the two social media tools/applications.

Today’s Twebinar was not enough alive. The microblogging livestream activity was very much alive (as it always is) but I was expected to attend a live casting of a chain of Web-based conversations. Chris’ conversations with the social media strategists were shoot earlier and that was a bit disappointing. It would have been much better if Chris had in his live studio some “real”guests and an ongoing animated conversations.

The interviews somehow lacked focus. The only overarching theme was the social media, but that was too general and for us already knowledgeable with the topic, it was not too informative. I cannot say that I learned anything new today. Therefore, for the future Twebinars, it would be better to focus on one particular hot social media topic and explore it in greater depth.

The Twitter chats were inspiring as always, but I had difficulty following all three (or two?) streams at once. Why not creating one centralized livestream? And why not preparing clearer instructions for the Twitter community beforehand?

Anyway, it was a great experience, a creative initiative from the Radian 6 team, and even better in terms of connecting with the new media community. And, I got a number of new followers….

And finally, I’d like to ask all of you who attended the first Twebinar: What do you think of it?

Map Mashups for Strategic Communicators

Map Mashups for Strategic Communicators

Map mashups have revolutionized online mapping and they are on the way to revolutionize the world of public communication. A map mashup is a social media Web application that enables creation and rendering of interactive maps with integrated customized external data. It takes content from many different sources, combines them, and merges these structures into one coherent multimedia whole. The result is a hybrid which is a whole new genre with a huge potential usage in different industries (travel, real estate, politics, entertainment, social networking, healthcare, education, etc.).

The first instances of map mashups were not social enough because they did not allow users to add or edit existing “mapped” data. Chicago Crime Map, for instance, did not allow its users to comment on or chat about crimes. The latest versions, however, have become more refined because Application Programming Interfaces (API) developers made it possible to build up sustainable, enjoyable, online social interactions. The map mashups now are truly social because they allow collaboration and syndication of mapped content.

The development of the new map mashup (or geo-mashup) genre has enabled and initiated a growing trend of citizen, amateur cartography. Many people today, thanks to a widely available user-friendly APIs, are creating map mashups or uploading photographs from GPS phones that can be added to collaborative online mapping sites. Practicing this strategy is becoming increasingly popular and communication professionals should embrace it to enrich their online strategies.

One good example of map mashup developed by adding to Google Maps data from Flickr, WeatherBug, Wikipedia, Eventful, Google Friend Connect, and even more, is MapDango.com. It is an extensive Google Maps travel mashup that lets you explore locations and travel information (after entering a zip code) with added information such as weather (WeatherBug), photos (Flickr), facts (Wikipedia), events (Eventful), news (Google News) and, recently added, Google Friend Connect. Thanks to the presence of so many social features, every registered user can add comments to and review their favorite places as well as upload and share their pictures from the locations.

From the communication standpoint, this application provides an optimal online platform to present travel data in a new, engaging, and visually compelling way. It is a convenient channel for reaching and connecting with niche audiences by creating an online social hub. The “Be Social” option, which allow users to comment and add their reviews of the locations, gives professional communicators an opportunity to get and stay connected with their audiences, listen to them, and respond to their suggestions. This is also a free, constantly updated, online survey of the targeted travel publics. Moreover, there is a “mapdangito” (little MapDango), a portable widget that can be embedded on one’s Web site or blog sidebar. This means a possibility to spread your client’s data virally and reinforce its online presence.

New mapping tools can also be a powerful force for advocacy, social change, and even fundraising. One great example of strategically used map mashup to promote a cause is Stopnewnukes.com. This is an education/advocacy project to raise awareness of the impact of nuclear weapons as well as to call people to action and ask for donation. This map mashup combines Google Maps with Flickr photos of various nuclear hazards, and mashes them with background information on the danger of nuclear weapons. By clicking on the map pushpins, users are instantly redirected to the organization’s Web site with additional data. In the same way, users can upload printable posters. This is a new form of online outreach and a powerful tool to engage and mobilize people. The Peace Education Fond (PEF) has increased the number of visitors on its Web site, many of them coming from the Stopnewnukes mashup site. Users’ meshup posts to StumbleUpon (and to the other bookmarking sites) contributed greatly to the increase of PEF Web site’s traffic and raised the visibility of the organization’s cause.

Another good example of an effective usage of map mashups to tell the story in a new, refined way is Mibazaar.com. It presents US Presidential candidates by combining data and multimedia from Google Maps, YouTube, and Google news feeds for each candidate, in addition to their basic bio facts. It is a new map mashup, uploaded on May 27, and it will surely be virally spread in the future.

As this example shows, when used in political arena, map mashups can provide professional communicators new ways to tell the story and, what is more important, to tell it in an interesting and visually effective way. Given that we live in an information saturated world, map mashups with their capacity to accumulate multiple layers of data, and often, multimedia data formats into one coherent whole, prove to be useful and time-saving tools. Instead of browsing endlessly in order to gather scattered facets of the story, users now are getting centralized patchwork content. What is more important, a Google survey has shown that 80% of all data can be easily presented in the form of maps. And it means a huge possibility for strategic communicators.

These are only a few examples of many possible usages of map mashups for strategic communication. With flourish of micro-blogging tools and their incorporation in maps to create real-time map mashups, such as this Live Disney map (Twitter lifestrem and Flickr pictures mashed with the locations of Disney’s visitors), maps have become more dynamic and even alive. This is a new way how data is used and presented. Many maps are even made portable—users can take them in the forms of widgets or badges (like the “mapdangito”) and embed them to their own Web sites, which adds a powerful viral capacity to their value.

The future of the online communication has been changed with map mashups applications and communicators need to embrace these trends and use them strategically and creatively in their communication campaigns.

Social Media and Postmodern Poetics

Social Media and Postmodern Poetics

Widely used social media terms such as remixing and remixability are just well coined “tags” for the phenomenon established a long ago in the postmodern poetics. However we name them, there are certain distinctive features embodied in all artistic creations developed within the postmodern frame. The same applies to the postmodern communication theory:

"Working through such modes as appropriation, synthesis, recombination, mutation and generation, postmodern poetics expresses a commitment to the dialogical, social world."
(Conte, Joseph M. Unending Design: the Form of Postmodern Poetry)

In the postmodern poetics, as well as in our social media world, the phenomenon of the author and the institution of authorship have been deconstructed.

Similarly, in the Web-based communications, everyone is a potential author, contributor, and message creator . The concept of a traditional author (or a message creator) is deconstructed and replaced by a collective authorship. The individual as well as an organization cedes control over the communicative process.

User-generated content has become a distinctive feature of new interactive media. As a consequence, the content is not only created by a “collective intelligence,” it is also formed through the network of other contents.

Every digital text refers to many other documents by using a number of links embedded in the text. This hypertextuality (or we can call it "remixability" if you want) results in a fragmented digital text whose meaning co-exists simultaneously within an interconnected system of other texts. The final product is like a palimpsest; it assimilates all other texts that refer to or from it, but still keeps their integrity alive.

Furthermore, message recipients are no longer passive consumers but active participants in content creation. As a consequence, the traditional concept of a reader has been deconstructed as well, since the recipient has become a producer and an active contributor in communication process.

Social media also signifies a transformation of the old two-way communication model and the creation of a new all-way dispersive communication model. This model has been also developed from the poetics of postmodernism. New communication practice incorporates an “all-together” mentality which is why social media means primarily the democratization of communication. Participation, sharing, collaboration, and interactivity are the crucial terms in explaining the nature of new media and its impact on communication.

This postmodern change has only culminated in our times because of the production of the new Web 2.0 tools and applications that have enabled practicing new modes of connections and communications. This is inherent in the two-way communication model and it was advocated long before social media, but social media has made it even more essential.

Politics 2.0

Digital Politics

A few days ago I was happy to chat with and interview Alan Rosenblatt. We talked about social media world and how the explosion of new media tools is shaping politics and 2008. presidential elections. Here is a short summary of Alan's career.
Alan Rosenblatt has a PhD in Political Science and he became a professor in Political Science in the early 1990s. At that time, his focus of interest shifted from the graduate school research on the use of television to influence public opinion into talking about the Internet politics.

"In 1993 I was shown Mosaic, the first Web browser and I had a strong feeling it's going to change the world of politics. And I focused my energy on it from there on."

At that point, Alan was a professor at George Mason University where he was teaching political science, persuasion and propaganda, research methods, and public opinion. As a result of his knowledge and passion he put together a course called Politics of Cyberspace, the first time in the world that anyone thought the course on the Internet Politics. After that, Allan started doing both consulting and teaching the Internet Politics. He is also an avid blogger at DrDigiPol.

Politics 2.0

If you liked this video, you can look for more inspiring thoughts on Digital Politics and Internet Advocacy on the Web-sites that Alan contributes to. He writes for TechPresident.com, a blog about the Web and the presidential elections, and occasionally for PoliticsOnline.com, Idealware.org, and the Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet. He is also active at e-Democracy.org and contributes to many academic journals devoted to the intersection of politics, social science, and the internet.

What is Social Media?

"A powerful global

conversation has begun.
Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."

(The Cluetrain Manifesto)

Social media is usually defined as online technologies and practices that people use to connect and share opinions, experiences, and knowledge with each other. The concept of social media typically involves the usage of tools and applications such as blogs, message boards, online social networks, podcasts, webcasts, Wikis, and live-stream microblogging tools to allow users to easily interact. A few prominent examples of popular social media applications today are Facebook and MySpace (social networking), YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), del.ici.ous (social bookmarking), Twitter (micro-blogging), Wikipedia (reference), and Flickr (photo sharing). Participation, sharing, collaboration, and interactivity are the crucial terms in explaining the nature of new media and its impact on communication.

Social media means primarily the democratization of communication. Everyone is a potential author, contributor, and message creator in Web-based communications. User-generated content is a distinctive feature of interactive media. The content is not only created by a “collective intelligence,” it is also formed through the network of other contents. Every digital text refers to many other documents by using a number of links embedded in the text. This hypertextuality results in a fragmented digital text whose meaning co-exists simultaneously within a system of other texts.

Social media also signifies a transformation of the old two-way communication model and the creation of a new all-way dispersive communication model. This model has been developed from the poetics of post-modernism. The concept of a traditional author (or a message creator) is deconstructed and replaced by a collective authorship. The individual cedes control over the communicative process and its final product. Message recipients are no longer passive consumers but active participants in the content creation.

The nature of new media is participatory. This is a radical decentralization and a shift of “power to the edges.” “The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.” (Baker and Green, 2008). Consequently, some of the key words that define the nature of the new media are networking, syndication, collaboration, openness, real-time discussion, engagement, community building.