One for Fun: Want a Mapfaced or Evernote Beta Invite?*
It’s the end of the week, which means time for Ricochet’s One for Fun.
Today, I’m giving away private beta invites.
Update: All the invites are gone. If I get more in the future, I’ll post a new note.
Mapfaced allows users to create, search for and rate food and drink crawls in New York City. It’s positioned to be part map mashup, part Yelp.
Evernote is a multiplatform notetaking and clip organizing tool. It’s been around since at least 2005, but the new incarnation allows you to pass clips to Evernote from PCs (Windows XP/Vista) and Macs (Leopard), phones running Windows Media, and Web browsers (Firefox 2, Safari 3, IE7).
There’s even an alpha test of IMAP support, so iPhone users can browse, clip and send to an Evernote account too.
Want to check either of these out? Post a comment telling me which site you’d like to try (one site only) and your email. And if you have a favorite bar or restaurant you’d like to recommend, post that too.
I’ve only got a few invites for each site. First come, first served.
Here’s One Reason to Have News Blogs Hosted Elsewhere
The Times Online in London had a temporary outage today.
Despite being “very busy,” there were links to several blogs hosted on TypePad, and those pages were live.
Toronto Star Maps Earth Hour Blackout
Downtown Toronto will go dark at 8 p.m. Saturday as citizens turn out the lights to observe Earth Hour, a World Wildlife Fund campaign to raise global awareness of the human impact on the environment.
The Toronto Star staff produced a map of participants, but apparently was overwhelmed by the response and didn’t map all 1,163 places.
Nevertheless, it appears the area stretching from York to East York is going to be very, very dark.
Toronto is just one of 26 flagship cities that will take part in the event. The Star is preparing readers for their hour of darkness with special coverage, which began with the breathtaking “Airsick” video (posted here in January).
It would have been fun and useful to have a separate map or map overlay of events instead of text listings by neighborhood.
Still, kudos to the staff for spending time on a project that serves its community.
More information can be found on the Earth Hour site and, of course, there’s an official Flickr pool.
Minding the Credibility Gap
Poynter Online has announced a one-hour webinar April 8 on maintaining credibility with the online news audience.
NewsU blurb talks about a review of the “Online Credibility Gap” survey, but has no link to what survey the seminar will focus on. A guess tells me it’s an update on APME’s Building Trust in the News” project.
For those who want to delve deeper into a study about public trust of online media, check out the findings from William P. Cassidy published last year in “Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.”
One for Fun: Journalist Bars Announce Last Call
Yes, I realize this was first posted last Friday. And yes, I realize the story is about the demise of pubs where journalists would congregate to talk to sources and each other. But it’s a good piece (though the London segment was lame) and it’s the weekend.
While the video focuses on the longtime hangouts that have had to close due to a loss of patronage, I wonder where journalists are going now to congregate and unwind? Post your favorite bar and news organization affiliation in comments or send me an email — I feel a mapping opportunity coming on.
Meanwhile, here’s “Journalism Watering Holes Disappearing” from MarketWatch.
