Observations of a Jailed Journalist | MetroFocus. MetroFocus Web Editor John Farley, kneeling, was arrested while reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protest. Farley was working on a story about citizen journalism at the time. MetroFocus/Sam Lewis. On Sept. 24, while working on a story about citizen journalism for my employer, I found myself arrested, along with many other people.
My arrest gave me a unique vantage point on the risks and rewards of citizen journalists, those non-professionals who capture stories (usually without pay) using videos and images via portable technology like a cell phone camera. Anyone, even a passerby or a police officer can be a citizen journalist. That’s its power. Here’s what happened. My colleague Sam Lewis and I had previously covered Occupy Wall Street, an ongoing demonstration against economic inequality, on the first day it began, Sept.17. When we first arrived on the scene, protesters were marching along the sidewalk in unison, chanting. However, the stream of protesters did disrupt traffic. Hyperlocal on mobile is more hyped than hyper, says Yahoo! The idea of “hyperlocal” mobile services has been gaining a lot of popularity recently – but just what does that mean? At the Location Business Summit this week in Amsterdam, Gary Gale, Director of Engineering, Yahoo! Geo Technologies gave a refreshingly amusing presentation that asked just what “hyperlocal” actually means, and whether it’s really ready yet.
“Location” has been one of the drives of mankind since the first days of communication – after all, you need to know where someone is in order to deliver a message. From smoke signals and homing pigeons to SMS, location is a necessary ingredient. So is a location-based application the pinnacle of that drive? But what IS hyperlocal? Gary proposes that we are in the age of location-based hype at the moment, and that the phrase “hyperlocal” can mean wildly different things depending on who you ask. So those are the general ingredients. Put all that together, you start getting “hyperlocal services”. Final word? Journal Local — Supporting and showcasing great hyperlocal. The Era of Location-as-Platform Has Arrived. The mobile location "check-in" is fast becoming the hot new status message type online. It was only a matter of time until "where you are" became a platform to build added value on top of just like "who you know" has on social networking sites like Facebook.
Canadian newspaper chain Metro announced today that it has launched a deal with location-based social network Foursquare that will deliver location-specific editorial content from the paper's website to users' phones when they check-in near a spot Metro has written about before. The potential for services like this is huge. It's too bad Metro appears to be taking the easy way out and focusing on delivering restaurant reviews, but it's a start.
The Incredible Potential of Location-Based News In November we wrote a long piece about some of the kinds of things Twitter's new Geolocation API makes possible. Just imagine. User checks-in, via mobile phone: "I'm checking in at the coffee shop at SE 78th and Stark. " The Hyperlocalist.