Tag: crowdsourcing

Crowd sourcing the book …

Is this the future of the book?

Brian Stelter is a New York journalist who is writing (has been commissioned to write?) a book about morning TV. Here he’s commissioning his twitter followers to come up with ideas for the content:

Brian Stelter  

Before I write 1 word of this book, I want feedback about what people really want to read. Tweet me or comment here:

5 hours ago via web

via twitter.com

I think this is happening more and more as the crowd usurps the individual in the Zeitgeist of web creativity. But isn’t it the original perspective of one writer that makes ‘authoring’ something more than mashing-up the more perspicacious offerings of the crown?

The Project | Fab@Home

The Fab@Home Project is an open-source mass-collaboration developing personal fabrication technology aimed at bringing personal fabrication to your home. Members include those who use their abilities to develop novel hardware, software and uses for digital fabricators and those who simply use it to make unique items. The Community includes hundreds of engineers, inventors, artists, students, and hobbyists across six continents. Engage with the community by participating in our blogs and forums

via fabathome.org

Opening the doors to learning

Subtitling lectures from top universities in the United States and elsewhere means open courseware is available to all, Lulu Tsao reports

Yale professor Shelly Kagan doesn’t speak Chinese, but thanks to online subtitling groups, thousands of Chinese students can now listen to Kagan’s lectures. Over the past few months, China’s top-ranked volunteer translation group, YYeTs, has subtitled 10 of Yale University’s Open Courses for viewers to download for free, including Kagan’s philosophy class on death.

Open courseware, which includes video lectures, assignments, and other materials from university classes, is available to anyone with an Internet connection. While people no longer have to be on campus to watch the lectures, a language barrier remains for non-English speakers.

Volunteer translation, or “crowdsourcing”, is one solution that is increasingly popular in China, with Kagan’s course receiving over 10,000 visitors per day.

via chinadaily.com.cn

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT on Vimeo

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/20543283 w=500&h=283]

via vimeo.com

A lovely idea. JR wins £100,000 to make a difference with his art. So he invites as many people as possible around the world to upload photos of themselves to his website. He then sends back big poster prints of those same portraits which he invites the people to stick up wherever they want. His website for this is already up and running at: www.insideoutproject.net

More on this from the guardian.

Ideas for modern living: collaborative consumption

We are surrounded by assets that have “idling capacity” – the untapped social and economic value of under-utilised spaces, skills, time, gardens, and “stuff”. With the rapid growth of network technologies, we can connect and collaborate on a scale and in ways that have never been possible before. Networks, smart phones and real-time platforms create the efficiency and social glue to trade, swap, barter, lend, gift or share “idling capacity” in ways that can enhance all aspects of our daily lives. It’s a growing culture and economy called collaborative consumption.

When you rent out your empty room on a site like crashpadder.com, not only can you make some money but also give visitors access to a local, personal experience of your city. Through “garden dating agencies”, such as landshare.net, you are connected with a gardener who might not have the space to grow their own veg and you are helping strengthen reciprocation in your community.

By using a peer-to-peer car-rental platform, such as whipcar.com, you can maximise the usage of your vehicle and create trusting neighbourhood relationships between lender and lessee. And these examples are just the tip of the iceberg of thousands of collaborative marketplaces popping up around the world.

Collaborative consumption has the power to revolutionise how we tap into idling capacity, and by doing so change the way we view and become a part of communities in unique and meaningful ways.

via guardian.co.uk