NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.

Safety & Disaster

Givvy - Giving Management + Network for Good

Project URL: 
http://www.givvy.com
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

Givvy is a comprehensive online giving management system launching in early June. This is a real project with a dedicated team working without funding at this point.

Charitiable giving is personally and emotionally rewarding. By providing a framework and set of tools to improve the way we support our causes, Givvy users will feel more satisfied and successful with their giving.

Givvy is a system to enable donors to accomplish the following:

  1. easily create and manage their giving plan
  2. research over 1 million charities/nonprofits
  3. execute their giving (donate thorugh Network for Good) and track donations made via other methods (mail, phone, etc.)
  4. analyze their giving footprint - what types of charities, what geographic reach, how close their actual giving is to their plan, etc.

At Givvy we believe that better tools for giving can result in a better world.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

We are mashing up IRS data on 1.4m charities, user reviews and ratings, wiki pages for each charity, and more. In addition, we are joining this data to merchant-funded rebate malls to generate donations through shopping, auction services and more.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

This is our first social venture.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Organization Supporting your project, if any: 
None
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

We need funding to cover license fees and initial launch activity.

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

Network for Good & Google Maps Donation Mashup

What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

This is a simple mashup using Network for Good’s donation API, with a particular focus on enhancing the donor experience with a virtualization of recent donations.

The NFG API mashed-up with a Google map would show all donations made to specific causes (by location) for a given time period over a US or World map.

This could be used on the homepage of Network for Good - to inspire others based on the action currently taking place.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

As with any Google Map, all the "bubbles" will be clickable to show detailed information.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

The WITNESS Video Hub map is a good example of other work we have done similar to this project:

http://hub.witness.org/en/map

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

Financial resources to make it happen.

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

Simply the Google Maps API and the NFG API.

Text a Farmer, Support a Farmer, Alert a Farmer with CellAlert.net

Project URL: 
http://www.CellAlert.net
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

We have found 2 major problems that the Internet presents for both the western world and the 3 billion people living on less than $2/day (see http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp):
1) Those without Internet have comparatively no information
2) Those with the Internet have information overload

What if we were to solve 2 problems at one time? What if we delivered information to people without Internet access via the quickly expanding 2 billion cellular phone users worldwide? And what if we did it all through keyword-filtering of RSS feeds of their favorite sites and information?

What if we created a partnership of CellAlert.net with non-profits that can apply to use a CellAlert Open API which allows them a completely customized mashup of their own design (within the CellAlert Open API rules)?

In short, we have so many mashup possibilities, we hope you'll want to mash CellAlert.net and FreeAlert.org with non-profit organizations anywhere they need to distribute urgent content to the 2 billion cell phones in the world. So why not go with the approach of an "API mashup"?

I am the co-founder and CEO of FreeAlert.org and of CellAlert.net. My applications are RSS search technologies that instantly notify subscribers 24 hours per day by cell phone and/or email of the items that the subscribers are seeking when the item appears in any RSS feed they search worldwide. The flagship application we started with is called FreeAlert.org. Since that time, we've expanded to include http://www.cellalert.net and expanding soon to http://www.Africalert.org, http://www.Asialert.org and http://www.Americasalert.org

FreeAlert.org is an RSS search technology that instantly notifies subscribers 24 hours per day by cell phone and/or email of the *free* items that they are seeking on Craigslist whenever the item appears in any Craigslist RSS feed they search worldwide.

We hope that one of our mashup ideas will be something that you will facilitate.

Currently we are focused on El Salvador, but we see tremendous potential for good purposes being served and facilitated by text alerts in developing nations worldwide!

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

We would like to offer a site that offers our text alert services in Rwanda and/or Uganda where the Grameen Foundation has made inroads with Village Phone and offer them a text-based marketplace alert system. We want to send marketplace and micro-loan opportunity-alerts to cell phone users across Bangladesh, Uganda and Rwanda.
We want to couple our opportunity alert service with Fair Tracing; creating a Fair Trade Alert mashup to ensure international business accountability.

Done correctly, CellAlert.net could notify thousands of people oversees about requests for proposals and goods needed. For instance, oil-based agricultural crops essential to biodiesel production appear to be a potential world-changer for Africa, which is poised to become the #1 producer of biodiesel worldwide.
CellAlert.net could create connections for vegetable oil buys directly between socially responsible companies and farmers in developing countries for their fuel needs. For instance, the Safeway Corporation recently switched their entire trucking fleet to biodiesel. We want to connect the developing world farmer to the Safeway type corporations ready to buy from developing markets for a fair price.

Once the project is complete, we have plans to expand CellAlert.net as follows:
EMERGENCY ALERTS, MEDICAL SUPPLY ALERTS, FREE ITEM ALERTS, LOAN ALERTS, LOCAL INNOVATION ALERTS, ENTREPRENEUR NETWORK ALERTS, REGIONAL NEWS ALERTS VOLUNTEER ALERTS

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

Since 1997, I have focused heavily on the South Sudan, Darfur and the Congo areas on my web site compassionateaction.org. I have also participated in numerous peace marches on Washington and held the first Compassionate Action Briefing on Sudan in July 2005. I am currently researching a potential partnership between Arlington, Virginia novabiodiesel.org to research the feasibility of importing oil from sustainable agriculture projects that are growing Jatropha plants in Sierra Leone and Mexico for biodiesel production. I am also providing Winrock International's software in El Salvador for cell phone distribution of current crop and commodity prices to farmers allowing them to by pass the middle men who have been cheating them by withholding commodity trading prices from them.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Project RSS Feed: 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/freealert/bNhW
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

2 dedicated programmers with experience in Drupal, PHP, Python, RSS, XML and REST and/or Google API skills and kannel.org/SMS knowledge is a plus.

1 Web 2.0-experienced Graphic Designer

1 User Interface Designer (CSS, HTML, with some JavaScript, AJAX, PHP, Drupal and RSS helpful)

1 dedicated hosting environment with the following:

At least 1,500 Gigabytes of Hosting Space with *no* CPU Quota
Host unlimited Domains

Unlimited Pop/Imap Email Accounts
SSH Access (Secure Shell)
15,000 Gigs of Transfer
SSL, FTP, Stats
Perl, PHP, MYSQL, Python
24 Hour Support and no downtime

"Block Party" NeighborSourcing

What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

Once upon a time, we all knew our neighbors.

We knew Daisy, the golden retriever addicted to soggy tennis balls. We knew the saggy sofa in the den, stained by one too many Strawberry Jello spills by the kids. We knew the noise of the lawnmower, the squeek of the garage door or the buzz of the doorbell. We knew just when we'd hear footsteps slogging up the stairway or when the elevator would ping open.

Now. in all too many cases, we only see 'neighborhood' on Sunday nights via Desperate Housewives or via Big Brother.

One of the best things about knowing your neighbors was knowing things like which house has the twins with chicken pox . . . which street has a couple of persistent gushers bubbling up . . . who has been 'down' with the flu or fighting breast cancer . . what new building/development is going on . . is that creek still flowing or drying up . . .

If we all still had BLOCK PARTIES, yes, that remnant of the 50's or 60's or whatever Leave It To Beaver era in which those organic mob-projects occurred, maybe we would have enough information to protect us and each other.

Yes, there are a wide variety of domestic and international public health/service agencies that track disease, safety issues, environmental trends, etc. But there are certainly legions of examples of why perhaps even the most ethical of public or corporate organizations seldom tell the whole or even the most realistic stories.

Which is why we must tap into the power of citizen journalism . . . or Neighbor-Sourcing to complete a realistic picture of health trends of all kinds, from traditional health care issues (including insurance) to environmental and safety. By harvesting glocallogy tools such as mapping, crowdsourcing and even crowdfunding, we may be able to act more quickly on trends, problems -- or opportunities -- as they occur. We need not wait for the government to announce issues long after it is too late to do something.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

Neighbor-Sourcing info on a variety of significant local concerns and opportunities which allows 'Block Party' reporting to be transformed into relevant maps and or RSS notifications of urgent/pending issues.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

As the 'guru of new', I have a rich, robust background in new product development, including participating in a number of incubators -- most notably as one of the first members of AOL's pioneering Greenhouse back in the dinosaur days of the 'Internets.' (I actually have a print-out of an email from Al Gore, once know as Auto-Al, for those of trying to get our projects launched with White House support.)

I have long experience in the health care category as well, working with hospitals, pharmaceuticals, physicians, etc.

And I live in a small town neighborhood environment in the sticks of Carmel Valley. But I still don't know many of my neighbors.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

A complete team + neighbors.

Alchemlist

Project URL: 
http://www.alchemlist.org
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

Alchemlist will make donating (stuff) as easy as item, zip, search while creating and expanding community around donation. People will discover non-profits that exist in their own communities, perhaps right next door, that they never knew existed, become aware of their needs, and be inspired to take action to help meet those needs.

Non-profits (especially small non-profits) will receive increased donation of in-kind items and greater visibility that leads not only to donations but to more volunteers and monetary donations as well. The site will help raise awareness about all the non-profits working in our communities and their needs as well as the issues that they formed to address so that we can help ease the needs of our neighbors.

Alchemlist will help save landfill space (and closet space!) as people find homes for items they would have thrown in the trash or gathered dust in their home.

A greater sense of community and altruism will be fostered.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

Alchemlist will merge information provided by thousands of non-profits with proven geolocation and mapping technology. Non-profits will provide the information on who they are, what their purpose is, who they serve, and (most importantly) what they need. Visitors to Alchemlist will provide information on what they have and where they are located.

  1. Users can search for specific items/categories of items they have to donate and find a nearby non-profit that needs them.
  2. Users can search for non-profits in their geographic area and see what items they currently need
  3. Users will be able to see a map of non-profits
  4. In the future they will also be able to search for non-profits by category (Youth, etc)
  5. A Facebook application is also being developed that will allow people to see a map of non-profits near them. Non-profits with Urgent Needs are indicated with a different symbol. Leveraging Facebook's social networking capabilities with Alchemlist's non-profit wishlist compilation, people will be able to immediately communicate with each other and work together to help those in need
  6. In the next phase, users will be able to participate in a scavenger hunts feature where they can join teams and gather items for non-profits. Individuals and teams will be able to set goals, score points, and compete.
What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

Most recently, I led/coordinated a "scavenger hunt" using Alchemlist to gather items for a local teen shelter, ROOTS. The shelter got a big influx of supplies and is now on all of our radars in case we come across the needed items throughout the rest of the year. It was a great team-building, community building endeavor. We shared laughs, ideas, and made lifelong friends in the process.

Volunteer/intern in a variety of non-profits: refugee resettlement (IRC), accessible cross-country ski trips with environmental education (ETC), Habitat for Humanity...

I make efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle in my daily life!

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

Business/Legal Advice to determine if Alchemlist.org should be a 501c3, a social enterprise, or a for-profit business that donates a chunk of proceeds and help writing a business plan

Advertising/Marketing Assistance to determine what communities would receive the greatest benefit from Alchemlist and how to expand into them (marketing to non-profits and potential in-kind donors)

Graphic Design assistance to produce a cutting-edge look and feel which will compel users to use Alchemlist over and over.

Technical/Programming Assistance- to be able to link directly to non-profit wish lists listed on their sites, to fine-tune the FaceBook feature, create a map/directions feature, and implement the scavenger hunt

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

Some example non-profits are:

  1. Environmental Travelling Companions
  2. Northwest Center
  3. Roots Young Adult Center
  4. A full listing of currently registered non-profits is Here.

Alchemlist is currently beta-testing a Facebook application

Change Broadcasting Channels

Project URL: 
http://amishg.googlepages.com/ablinko
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

People are becoming more socially responsible, and want to be up-to-date with news about social change and impact. Plus, they are self organizing in online and real world communities to work together and bring change.

CBC (Change Broadcasting Channels) allows users to select channels of social change, and receive instant news about these channels on a mobile phone through SMS or twitter. Every channel has a community of subsribers that use the community tools to promote and share big stories and events. create momentum to find solutions to problems and trigger change.

Today there are a few barriers to getting instant access to socially relevant news:

· Relevant news needs to be obtained from sites dedicated to socially responsibility.

· Most of these sites have information from blogs and RSS feeds. Very few if any, have information from global news wires.

· These sites by nature offer a pull-based model, rather than an alert-based one where the user is notified of any news of interest as it happens.

· The user does not have much flexibility in choosing the news they want to track.

The idea of Change Broadcasting Channel is to create channels of news about issues of social change, and the endpoint for these channels is your mobile phone. Twitter serves basic phones with only SMS functionality. Flurry serves phones with a data plan.

A user can subscribe to an existing channel or create their own, based on a set of keywords.

Each channel has a community which is the group of subscribers to the channel. And this community gets triggers (the SMSes/twitters from a river of news) that create momentum, driving them to address their cause.

CBC will also integrate with http://www.groundreport.com to bring real user-reporting on channels mixed with mainstream media news from Daylife.

Change Broadcasting Channels will change the world by instantly informing socially active individuals of news of their interest, eliminating any delay in action. These users are part of communities where they actively use the modern tools to bring out the most relevant stories and issues and cultivate a discussion to find solutions.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

The 4 main interfaces/data sources that people will interact with - news from http://daylife.com and http://groundreport.com and SMS/messaging capabilities from Twitter and Flurry mobs.

CBC 'Pop Demand' allows users to specify keywords of social change that they want to keep track of. Users can submit these keywords, which are evaluated and added to the social channel taxonomy. Once the request for certain keywords exceeds a certain number, this keyword becomes an official channel. Some examples channels:

* Crisis & Conflicts * Education * Energy * Social Sector Finance * Microfinance * Women's Rights * Cultural Rights * Child Rights * Human Trafficking * Poverty * Human Rights * Environment * Health * Community Improvement * Arts & Culture * Public & Social Benefit * Safety & Disaster * Employment Issues * Urban Development

A user can subscribe to one or more channels over SMS. CBC continuously polls the news for these keywords, and notifies the subscribers of the respective channels over SMS or twitter with a summary of news of those keywords. CBC uses twitter to send and receive SMS. Twitter users can send a direct message to the daylife twitter user dlfe, to recommend keywords for subsciption (eg d dlfe tax 'microfinance'). The CBC system saves the keyword and adds it to the channel request list. News messages are also sent to the users as direct messages to their twitter user ids.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

Founders of bwino.org

Developed and launched full Justmeans.com website.

 

 

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

We are a team of entrepreneurs and we work with a particular set of designers and developers.

In order to complete this project, we need financial resources to pay for the design, development and deployment work.

As this project grows, we will need Operations teams to moderate the channels and ensure that the community feels well served and safe.

 

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 
Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Amish Gandhi
Additional Project Idea Representative NetSquared Member Name: 
Amish_Gramish

Community News and Caring Map

Project URL: 
http://www.opednews.com
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

Writers have always written, not knowing about who or where their readers are. This mashup will show where the readers are coming from, who read a writer's article, or where the readers come from, who care about the same topics as any tag in the system.

We will use zip codes, which we have on record, for our members, or IP address, for non-registered visitors, to map where readers of a specific article come from. Since articles are also tagged, we can pull tag contact data for people as well, and map tags based on who's visited from where-- for any article.

When writers know more about where their readers come from, that could/will change the way they think about their readers and could change how they write.

This could have a powerful effect upon editorial decisions too. Since thousands of tags will be easily checked for how they "map", it will be possible to asses reach of the site and editorial policy in new ways.

Writing, news, Op-eds, the media-- they are essential elements of democracy. Understanding which aspects of the writing are reaching WHERE, for each article, or groups of articles, or by the author-- all of these should be easily pulled together using the system we've already built for managing content. Even on more local levels, if we can tap the power of google analytics to pull IP info and map it to local, county or state levels, this could be powerful, since we also tag our content by locale. For example, if a writer writing on water pollution discovers that the lower part of a county is seeing the articles, but not the upper level, and a river runs through the county, that could easily help the writer identify where further outreach is needed.

 

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

People who read an article by an author, or visit content associated with a tag, will be plotted on a map of the US/world. THe mashup will plot where the readers of the content come from.

We publish 1500+ articles a month and have over 55,000 articles, over 8000 tags, over 10,000 member writers we'll be able to use this with.

Readers will even be able to see a map of who has looked at the same articles. Imagine you are thinking of moving to a new location. You take articles you've read and look at maps of where the readers come from. That might give you an idea of where you'll find like minded people.

We're also going to be adding polling to the site shortly, so we'll be able to map responses to polls. Our polling system will be open to any member to use, so it will be easy for anyone to create a poll, then map the results. This will be invaluable for campaigns, causes, advocacy orgs... Then, we also collect demographic info, so we'll be able to add that layer to the mapping.

 

 

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

Like I said above-- we've published tens of thousands of articles and we've built, from scratch, a powerful content management, social networking website with unique tag cloud control panels.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

We've never done a google maps mashup and could use some startup help on integrating our data with the google API. We could use some financial help too.

Your Mapper - Know Your Neighborhood

Project URL: 
http://www.metromapper.org/
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

Three major empowering things would be improved in the world if this project happens.

One: Empowering local public citizens to learn about their neighborhood and take action when they identify a need. Citizens can view interesting things happening around their home and office on a map, and get notified when new things happen.

Two: Empowering local people to collect information that is currently locked up in government databases, and use our toolset to load that data and make it geographically and visually accessible to the public.

Three: Empowering local websites, blogs, news organizations, and companies by allowing them to embed searchable, interactive maps on their site as a service to their site audience.

Your Mapper is an online news organization that empowers people to obtain and load information in their home town, and make it available to their neighbors. We provide the tools that make this happen.

People who load the data (called "Mappers") only have to decide on what data they want, contact their local government agency for it, and assemble it into a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is ready we provide the tools to load it into Your Mapper, turn it into a public searchable map, and let the Mappers manage the data online and updates to the data.

People who look at the the online maps (called "Citizens") can type in any address in the United States, and see a list of all the maps available. They can subscribe to feeds and updates and downloads. Each map will have meta information provided by the Mappers, and Citizens can rate the quality of the data and map content, leave comments, flag inappropriate data, and save their favorite maps.

The community aspects and rating system ensures that the best maps bubble to the top of the site, and even allow Mappers in the same city to 'compete' to load the highest quality, most valuable information to for the Citizens.

Local websites and businesses (called "Community Sites") can choose which maps they might like to put on their own websites, choose the starting point, map size, and other options, and with a little cut & paste can have these maps on their site in no time.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

The core idea behind Your Mapper is to create an easy way to make public information that has long been locked up in internal government databases, and present it to the world in a way that is visually appealing, easy to understand, and local.

Examples of these kinds of datasets would be crime, restaurant health reviews, traffic accidents, building permits, sex offender registries, property values, and pollution sources, or anything that can be linked to a physical address or location.

Because each government office stores each of theses items internally in very different formats, it would take too many resources to create a relationship with these local agencies and obtain data dumps on a regular basis. Your Mapper empowers concerned citizens to collect and share this information, since they know their town or city and have a good idea of what others living there would want to see made public.

I do not believe that altruism alone is enough to encourage local Mappers to load and maintain quality local data, so Your Mapper actually compensates the Mappers based on the amount of website advertising and embedded map revenue generated that is specifically related to their maps. This would empower the Mappers to become "local experts," much like Google's Knol project and Helium.com does.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

Currently I run an online news service called Metro Mapper, which provides interactive maps of crime, restaurants, sex offender locations, and historic sites to the citizens of Louisville, Kentucky and the surrounding area. We have a set of internal tools that allow us to load data quickly and turn it into useful maps for the public.

Your Mapper would make these tools available for public use, and extend Metro Mapper nationally. An essential social community layer would be added on top of Metro Mapper to allow Mappers and their maps to be rated, flagged, and commented on.

Your Mapper would leverage our existing technology and reporting tools for Community Sites to embed the maps quickly and easily on their own site.

I consider Metro Mapper to be a proof of concept for a local municipality using some high-profile datasets, and the first step to creating the truly groundbreaking, national, and more robust service of Your Mapper.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Project RSS Feed: 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MetroMapperBlog
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

 

Business Manager/Partner

A skilled business person who understands new web technologies and would be a good compliment to my existing skill sets and experience.

PHP Developers

PHP and MySQL programmers who are excited and knowledgable about internet programming, AJAX, user interface, and "Web 2.0" concepts. Security, database scalablity, and performance are all important issues to consider.

People Person

The forward facing part of the service, forging initial relationships with government agencies, courting local Mappers, working with Community Sites, and generating interest in local areas and the press.

 

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

Examples of some datasources for the Mappers to tap.

Crime Map: http://www.metromapper.org/index-crime.php

Bridge Saftety Ratings: http://www.metromapper.org/index-bridges.php

Local Restaurants (a Community Site): http://www.louisville.com/entertainment/dining.aspx

City with Easy-to-grab Datasources (Washington DC): http://data.octo.dc.gov/

Downloadable Crime Stats: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/pages/-4258-/

EPA Superfund Mashup: Exposing Environmental Hazards In Your Area

What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

A Superfund site is an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous waste is located, possibly affecting local ecosystems or people. Sites are listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) upon completion of Hazard Ranking System (HRS) screening, public solicitation of comments about the proposed site, and after all comments have been addressed.

For many years, I lived in a very large Superfund site area without knowing and I'm sure many are in the same situation. This is because the EPA's pollution information is buried in the files on the web that are not easily human readable. Even the information provided by the EPA is only cursory, naming possible hazards and whether is has yet been deemed "clean."

Pollution CleanupThe "EPA Superfund Mashup: Exposing Environmental Hazards In Your Area" Project will make the 200+ Superfund Site's information visually available and human readable. It will promote engagement and accountability in private and public cleanup efforts and encourage those who live and work in those areas to document cleanup efforts and the human effect of large scale air, water, and soil pollution.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

Online, users with interact with photos, videos, public posts and detailed EPA data.

Offline, people will be encouraged to document cleanup (or lack of clean up) activities and human stories of how living in such an area effects their lives.

They can send tagged data to flickr, youtube, and post stories on blogs that will then be parsed to the correct Superfund site, making documentation collaborative, public and dynamic.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

See StopNewNukes.org for an example of the first project. I worked with Peace Action West to create this mashup and action. It shows you all of the places in the U.S. that have been effected by nuclear waste already (including a flickr feed of photos from those places) and sends you off to send a letter to Theodore Wyka, the manager of the Complex 2030 project over at the Dept. of Energy telling him that you don't want anymore nuclear development funding.

THe EPA Superfund Mashup: Exposing Environmental Cleanup In Your Area will be V2 of this project. It will encompass all 200+ superfund sites, including evironmentally disastrous things like oil spills and corporate pollution (instead of just radioactive cleanup).

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Organization Supporting your project, if any: 
Peace Action West
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://www.peaceactionwest.org
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

We will need a mySQL and/or XML programmer to expand current input and dynamically integrate different types of data.

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

Sources include:

EPA Superfund Data

Flickr (by tags)

YouTube (by tags)

Relavent info from the MetaVid Project

Accountability information from CorpWatch

Project Designer: 
Gabriel Scelta
Project Designer NetSquared Member Name: 
sfgabe

City of New Orleans: A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery

Project URL: 
http://thinknola.com/
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

Currently, in New Orleans, there is a run away process for the demolition of housing.

From Kelly Voight in the comments of Squandered Heritage.

My house at 5537 Franklin Avenue was demolished without proper notification to me or the mortgage company. Out of 4 notification channels, the city only followed 2 of their 4 channels.

We had been waiting for the city to issue us a renovation permit for almost 18 months. I had called and traveled to the 5th floor of City Hall. I had taken pictures and filled out all correct forms for my permit. As of the day that they knocked my house down, the permit was still “pending.”

My house was a 1945 Gentilly bungalow with double parlor, original floors, the Gentilly tile, and deco molding. It was in no danger of falling down. My contractor drove by, called, and asked why there were bulldozers on the property the morning they tore it down. Before he could reach us, the house was gone.

I cannot return to the city now. I feel such pure fury when I think of my house being torn down. City bulldozers trespassed on my property and tore down my lovely Gentilly bungalow. New Orleans has nothing to do with America anymore. New Orleans is dead to me, and I will not lift a finger to help or give back to it again.

Was this an accident? No. I is a pattern of negligence on the part of the city. An unimaginable abuse of power.

People have returned for the weekend to work on their homes, only to find them gone as noted in the Wall Street Journal story Katrina Survivors Face New Threat: City Demolition . People have been awoken to the sound of Entergy cutting the wires to the house in which they live as described in this NPR story New Orleans' Wrecking Ball Levels Healthy Homes.

The Recovery School District is now requesting permits to demolish dozens of schools, while HUD is in the midst of destorying thousands of units of public housing.

It is all happening quietly, while we struggle to rebuilding our homes. This project will tell people which structures are being demolished and where.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

The mashup under development a Think New Orleans will provide a citizen driven tool for the notification of demolitions.

Not only that, it will provide an interactive map of the recovery.

  • Permit overlay – Citizens will be able to view the pace of construction and the nature of construction with an overlay of city building permits. The permit information exists as a set of EditGrid spreadsheets, geocoded using Google Geocoder. It is updated automatically, every day with the latest permits, extracted from the city website. This is data that is ripe for the mashing.
  • City demolition overlay – We wrestle with the city to get an accurate list of the houses they intend to demolish. When we do, we will add that information as an overlay to the mashup.
  • Permit and demolition notification – Neighborhood groups are the driving force of New Orleans’ recovery. We want to provide them with a notification tool, that will allow them to get daily updates on who’s rebuilding, who’s coming back.
  • Incentive Eligable Inventory – As further tax incentives for restoration become available, the map will outline the historic districts and map the eligible housing inventory. The marker’s balloon will include the purchase price + estimated renovation – tax incentives = total cost to own, with links to financing at local banking partners. This will trun the mashup into an antidote to demolition.
What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

We've provided the technical support for Squandered Heritage, which has recorded the houses slated for demolition at their website an on Flickr. Think New Orleans has developed a geocoded list of every permit issued in New Orleans since January 2005, updated daily this resource is available as an EditGrid spreadsheet. This resource is used by neighborhoods to track demolition permits. We've also begun creating maps of the demolition list, using the data submitted to FEMA. This series of maps is the basis for ongoing development.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Project RSS Feed: 
http://thinknola.com/feed/
Organization Supporting your project, if any: 
New Orleans Housing Resource Center
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://thinknola.com/
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

We've received technical assistance from EditGrid and Mapufacture in the development of the mapping. We've begun to assemble a team of developers who can implement the application. We would love any additional technical support.

We need to draw attention to the project. We seek expertise in marketing and promotion of the website, help with advertising and marketing strategies, and partnerships with other municipalities.

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

We've extracted data from the city's online permit database and online database of blighted and adjudicated properties. We will also cross reference the city assessors database and integrate the resources available at the city GIS website, including lot overlays.

We've begun GIS workshops, using ArcGIS licenses generously donated by Harvard's Kennedy School, to create work with neighborhoods to create entirely new data sets using professional GIS software.

Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Francine Stock
Project Designer: 
Alan Gutierrez
Project Designer NetSquared Member Name: 
bigeasy
Project Engineer: 
Andrew Turner

Sponsors

  • Microsoft
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  • Raincity Studios
  • Mozilla Foundation
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  • Adobe
  • Linden Lab
  • Network For Good
  • Wild Apricot
  • Stanford Social Innovation Review
  • L'Atelier North America
  • The Panelist
  • Good
  • Fora.tv
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