CivicActions

What's my connection to mountaintop removal? Quite intimate, as I learned from entering my zip code into ilovemountains.org. The site identified my local electricity company's participation in mountaintop removal in the Appalachian states—showing the specific mountains (I've?) destroyed, as well as testimonials and photos from coalfield residents. Is that the impact I want to make here on earth? Did I do that? ilovemountains' online campaign employs the following smart strategies:

• Brings grassroots organizations together to maximize impact (7 organizations from 5 Appalachian states collaborated on the campaign)
• Personally engages visitors to the site (by showing the far˜reaching impact of daily local actions)
• Provides content that supports the diversity of its users, contributes to coalition-building, and frames issues in new ways ("Go Tell it on the Mountain" is an interfaith page where users can contribute prayers; an online "National Memorial for the Mountains" uses Google Earth; users can absorb their preferred type of content—video, photo, written testimonials, interactive tools).
• Provides clear calls to action (support the Clean Water Protection Act by writing to congress)
• Increases visibility and media coverage with star power (Willie Nelson)
• Uses web tools to support and spread their message (YouTube, Google Earth, online pledges, "myconnection" tool)—note that this strategy supports the other strategies, it doesn't serve as an end in itself!

Help end mountaintop removal: support this important campaign!

Newsweek reports that the same entrepreneurs who funded the "user-generated revolution" are now looking to professionals to edit and produce online content.

Are we at a turning-point with the "wisdom of the crowds" and moving to a more trusted and refined Web?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/119091/page/1

Planning on a movie tonight...

Bought tickets on Fandango...

On the PRINT screen, a pop-up: "...added to your Facebook"

"what?!"

I log onto Facebook and see

woah.

Jon Morrow, guest poster on Copyblogger, wrote a great article on the best way to write headlines that gain Digg (or other social media site) attention.

The Secret: Give Them What They Want!

If you've been on the Internet anytime over the last five years, you may enjoy this:

Internet People - Watch more free videos

From the people who brought you the enormously popular The Machine is Us/ing Us.

I'm surprisingly impressed with the new Ask.com. Look out Google!

What I like most is the contextual search (suggested topics to "expand" or "narrow" your search) plus integrated wikipedia entries, images and videos - all on a single page layout.

For example, search: Barcelona, Spain

http://www.ask.com/web?q=Barcelona%2C+Spain

Looks good to me!

Guy Kawasaki, the poster child of dot-com boom and crazy Silicon Valley venture capitalism, has entered the next generation of the Web using all the "right" buzzwords.

"By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09" is the title of his latest blog post.

Learn how Guy spent only $4K on lawyers, $400 on a logo, bought 55 domain names, setup a Wordpress site and used Yahoo! as the hosting environment.

Too bad, the site didn't survive the Digg effect. Someone should remind Guy that social media sites need to be _running_ to be useful. (As of writing this post, the site was still down.)

Check-out the top 20 largest social bookmarking sites by unique monthly visitor data and other traffic metrics.

"Much of the "easy" innovation seems to have been wrung out of the Web 2.0 wave. Web 2.0 was cheap - thanks to open source, simple - thanks to RSS/REST, and distinctive - thanks to AJAX and Flash."

"Now the hard work begins, again. The next wave of innovation isn't going to be as easy. The hard problems in the WWW are no longer usability or ease of everyday content creation. These problems are solved."

"Now the hard part is moving from Web-as-Digital-Printing-Press to true Web-as-Platform. To make the Web a platform there has to a level of of content and services interoperability that really doesn't exist today."