YourStreet.com puts Australia in the USA

Always keen to test new web offering I headed out to the www.yourstreet.com site to play with this unique concept that officially launches tomorrow.

YourStreet combines Google Maps and local news, it detects where you are and delivers news stories that have recently occurred in your area as well as comments from people who live near you. It is the first website to map news to a specific location.

CEO James Nicholson explains, “The thing that distinguishes us is that we can get down to a specific street level”. As a business model this means YourStreet can develop advertising campaigns to a specific “street level” audience.

Many people will remember Nicholson from his previous startup NetVentures which was sold to CNET for US$12 million way back in 1999. So far he has self invested around US$400,000 although this figure has not been confirmed.

Now back to the testing. [Read more]

The Rise and Rise of Presence Applications

Whether you call it micro-blogging, mini-blogging or a presence application (PA), one thing is for certain it is changing the way we connect and interact. PA’s like Twitter and Jaiku (to name a few) have extremely simple interfaces, are easy to comprehend and are highly addictive. Although PA’s are not new it seems that they are gaining traction because they offer an advantage over traditional digital expression technologies, the ability to interact via the interface of choice, be it a browser, IM, plugin, custom app or mobile phone. But I believe that mobile blogging can be attributed to the fast take-up and continuity of use that PA’s are currently experiencing. So how is this technology changing the way we connect and interact? [Read more]

What carparks teach us about newmedia

What do carparks and newmedia have in common? Answer: people!

Photo Copyright © Melanie J Cook - go to blog / flickr

I had to go to the shopping centre, not something that I relish, to pick up some supplies for the 23 people that would grace our home for an evening of food, games and socialising. I quickly found a park, raced in, purchased the items and exited to my car. Driving away from my parking space I noted in my rear vision mirror two cars fighting for the recently emptied spot. The sight of flying hands and harsh words bemused me enough to stop and examine what was happening within the confines of the carpark. [Read more]

Stand out from the newmedia jungle

Media fragmentation was a phrase I heard quite a bit this week. New technologies are popping up every week with new ways to connect to smaller and more fragmented groups of people. This consistent fragmentation of people and delivery mechanisms is becoming very frustrating to business who simply don’t have the time to keep pace with the day to day updates of newmedia. Users are now creating their own version of the web and ‘their’ content gets delivered to them. This is an interesting phenomenon as the way people use digital technology has made a total back-flip from people going to the content source, to, people expecting the content to be delivered to them according to their terms. Thanks to RSS and subscription technologies the interaction direction has completely reversed. [Read more]