Google LatLong let us know that Google Earth has now teamed up with Google News to create an informative ‘mashup’ — Extra! Extra! Discover the world’s news in Google Earth:

… Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide. Zoom into areas of personal interest and peruse headlines of national, regional and, when fully zoomed in, even the most local of interest. From school menus to global warming, there is now literally a world of information at your fingertips.

To activate the Google News layer, navigate to the “Layers” menu on the left-hand side of Google Earth. Expanding the “Gallery” node in the layers tree will expose the “Google News” layer. Check the box next to the Google News layer and start zooming into the places on the globe in which you’re interested. Each story is represented by a Google News icon on the globe. Clicking on the news icon opens up the news story’s snippet, along with links to learn more about the event.

It’s only logical really, but shows the power of what we can achieve if useful tools are allowed to work together cooperatively.

How can your organisation make use of this new view of world news?

[Via : @MiramarMike .]

Caution: experimenting with the techniques described in this post may lead to the ‘loss’ of several hours. You have been warned.

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The Internet is abuzz with a whole new vocabulary: memes and tags, posts and mashups, LOLcats, tweets and RSS. Friends, characters, flag, subscribe and interesting have a whole new meaning. This article helps you find your way in the new Web 2.0 world.

characters

letters, numbers, symbols, or spaces. When you send a txt message with a cellphone or a tweet through Twitter, you’ll be cut off after about 140 characters.

flag

Seen a photo on Flickr or a YouTube video that you find offensive? Flag it for the staff to review.

Flickr

An online service for storing and sharing photos. Add comments and tags. Subscribe to an RSS feed to automatically catch all photos from friends. Search or explore by many criteria.

friends

On social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn a friend is anyone you set up a connection with, whether you know them personally or not.

interesting

Flickr calculate an ‘interestingness’ score for each photo, based on tags, clicks, comments and so on. Explore the most interesting photos.

LOLcats

pictures of cats, with humorous captions, written to a certain style. LOL is short for ‘Lots of Laughs’ ‘Laugh out Loud’ (thanks Che for the reminder). Example: www.lolcats.com/view/55.

mashups

putting information together from more than one source. For example, combining crime statistics and Google maps CSI-style.

memes

An idea, saying or activity that takes hold and becomes popular. For example, LOLcats.

posts

Articles and other contributions to blogs, forums, etc.

RSS

Automatically delivers information from websites and other sources. For example, subscribe to the RSS feed for a particular person’s Flickr photos and any new photos appear automatically in your reader. Example National Library (NZ) photo feed.

subscribe

Usually free of charge. When you subscribe to something you add it to a list of items you will check regularly or receive automatically. For example, you might subscribe to the BBC Worldwide YouTube channel.

tags

Words that help describe something. A photo might be titled ‘Solace in the wind’, but have tags such as: wellington, waterfront, sculpture, statue, and so on.

tweets

Messages sent through the Twitter service.

Twitter

A service for broadcasting short text messages. People use it as a way to keep in touch and up-to-date with friends and colleagues, or news. Example: twitter.com/StuffNZ_World.

User generated

this means that you do the work. If you visit a website you may leave comments, upload images or movies, add information

that is all ‘user’ or ‘consumer’ generated.

Web 2.0

Websites and services that make it easy for people to connect with one another by rating items, marking favourites, sharing, commenting and so on.

YouTube

An online service for storing and sharing short videos. Add comments and tags. Subscribe to an RSS feed to automatically catch all new videos from a given topic. Search or explore by many criteria. Example, WildlifeDirect.

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, March 2008.

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