Citizen Media Watch

Tyda.se is a collaborative lexicon offering translations from Swedish to English and the other way around. The site is a citizen media effort, urging its visitors to contribute to the lexicon and to report any errors. It soon has a million words registered, the info page says.

We live in a time when the English language affects most of our surroundings. News, web sites, computer games, email, course literature, company documents and so on are just a few examples of areas in which both English and Swedish are used, and often mixed freely. In such an environment the need arises for a tool to bridge to any language problems.
We think that Tyda.se can make a great difference in this field!
Tyda.se wants to become the obvious choice when you need help translating between English and Swedish.

My translation. I didn’t use Tyda for it, so pardon any mistakes.

Tyda is also developing a reward system, so that users get points for the stuff they contribute. These points can lead towards different kinds of rewards. There will be audio files helping with the pronunciation of words, and examples of their usage.
The new version of the site will be launched later this month.

(via Frihetens vingar)

BusinessWeek.com has a long piece on ”vlogging, citizen journalism, and other facets of the online video phenomenon”. Long live the net video revolution, the article writer Catherine Holahan exclaims.
The article brings up vlogging in Iraq, video watching statistics in the US, political vlogging, personal commentary (with Rocketboom as example), ads and sponsorships.

2006 was notable not just for the sheer amount of online video but also for the quality of content that emerged. Sure, there was the torrent of porn, drunk college kids dancing, and parents posting cute videos of their kids. But there was also footage of the Mount Lebanon Hotel bombing, blogs highlighting environmental issues, video commentary on news and politics, and new made-for-online broadcast shows. More than ever, Internet video provided a platform for new voices and perspectives, giving even amateur filmmakers entrée to mass audiences traditionally garnered by established media outlets.

TV400, a niche channel for Swedish TV4, will launch a new tv show where high school kids can vote on people’s looks. Much like hot or not, but in a tv version. The show, named ”Snyggast i klassen” (”Looker of the class”, kinda), let couples appear on the show in front of an audience. Either the guy or the girl then gets to rate her/his partner against someone from the audience. Then the audience gets to decide if he/she’s right. And they can win some money.
The participants will be between 18 and 20 years old, writes Dagens Media.
TV400 program manager says to Dagens Media that the inspiration comes from websites where users can do similar ratings. The most famous/infamous site of this kind in Sweden is snyggast.se.

Steve Outing, in a recent ”Stop the Presses” column in Editor & Publisher, lists ten things small newspapers can do to fight decline in circulation and become more web2.0.

The 10 things (check out Outing’s column for the details):
1. Copy and build from the industry leaders
2. Don’t hire print-focused employees
3. Hire a hot-dog programmer, one way or another
4. Find (free or cheap) help and go crazy with experimentation
5. Make a class assignment.
6. Join forces with other small papers
7. Develop lots of localized online communities
8. Utilize the camera-toting army
9. Mix up professional and citizen reporting
10. Play off of what else is available online

And in the spirit of citizen content, let community members have their say in their own words — even if that means allowing bad grammar and misspellings. As long as it’s crystal clear that something is from a community member in his own words, very few people will mind.

(via Journerdism)

Rumors had it that CNN was experimenting with sending news alerts through Twitter. I thought that pretty cool, but of course it wasn’t the newschannel themselves, but rather an individual not associated with CNN at all. James Cox has created a mashup using CNN’s news emails and Twitter’s API. He posted this twitter:

everyone – added CNN Breaking News to twitter. ev – great API! — just do *add cnnbrk *and you’ll get the alerts as they are sent out 02:39 AM January 02, 2007 from im

In a comment at TinyScreenfuls.com, James Cox explains:

It was a mashup – been wanting breaking news on my phone for a while. CNN Breaking News comes as email, so I simply setup an email-to-twitter gateway using their really nice API.

All I have to do now is wait for the C&D from CNN 😀

(via Martin Stabe)