Vittorio Pasteris

Via Gazzette Digitali

Un minimo di ricerca, qualche clic ben assestato e pochi minuti di attesa. Creare sul proprio iPad la propria pubblicazione iperlocale, dedicata a qualunque località al mondo, può essere un gioco da ragazzi grazie a Flipboard. Basta individuare le fonti giuste su Twitter, inserirle in una lista e affidarsi a questa app di grande successo.

Via ReadWriteWeb

Neighborhood news aggregator Outside.in has been acquired by AOL, according to multiple reports this morning. Apparently it’s being bought for less than the big pile of money that high-profile investors put into it, back when hopes were high. It’s sad, really: the ambitious hyper-local news technology services of the last few years don’t seem to be working out very well.

Outside.in, EveryBlock and Fwix are the three sites best known for building out automated collection and analysis of news about particular neighborhoods of cities around the United States. There is huge, exciting potential there – but it takes resources to develop technology and media sites like this. Maybe a shortage of resources is why none of these sites are the thriving hub of activity that many people hoped they would be. There are many different theories why, but all three of the leading startups in this space feel like a disappointment so far.

Via Reuters

EBay Inc has acquired shopping engine Milo.com, underscoring the growing allure of local services even as fellow Internet giant Google ponders buying discount coupon site Groupon Shares in eBay rose over 2 percent. EBay, whose marketplaces site connects buyers with sellers of a vast array of goods, said on Thursday it planned to integrate Milo’s local product feeds onto its own site, as well as its mobile applications.

Milo lets users see in real time whether goods they seek are available in neighborhood stores. The company has more than 140 retail partners, including 90 small and medium-sized businesses, making up about 50,000 stores across the country. “Milo’s mission is to bring every product, on every shelf, of every store in the physical world onto the Internet,” Palo Alto-based Milo says on its website.

Via Giorgio Gianotto

Jeff Jarvis riporta, se ci fosse bisogno, l’interesse sull’informazione locale

Every address, every building, every business has a story to tell. Visualize your world that way: Look at a restaurant and think about all the data that already swirls around it — its menu, its reviews and ratings and tags (descriptive words), its recipes, its ingredients, its suppliers (and how far away they are, if you care about that sort of thing), its reservation openings, who has been there (according to social applications), who do we know who has been there, its health-department reports, its credit-card data (in aggregate, of course), pictures of its interior, pictures of its food, its wine list, the history of the location, its decibel rating, its news…

And then think how we can annotate that with our own reviews, ratings, photos, videos, social-app check-ins and relationships, news, discussion, calendar entries, orders…. The same can be said of objects, brands — and people.

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Via il Ducato

Si moltiplicano in Italia i siti d’informazione locale, spesso veri e propri giornali online senza un riferimento ad altre testate tradizionali. Sono decine in ogni parte d’Italia e una quarantina si sono raccolti nell’Associazione nazionale stampa online (Anso), il primo organismo associativo nato in Italia.

Il fenomeno è molto ampio: solo nella regione Marche ce ne sono almeno 24, solo sette dei quali risultano iscritti all’associazione.

Marco Di Maio, membro del consiglio direttivo dell’Anso, immagina che il numero di iscrizioni aumenterà, via via che si procede con il rinnovo delle quote: “probabilmente – dice – ci saranno delle integrazioni”. Per il momento Di Maio fornisce i dati relativi alle testate aderenti all’Anso: sei milioni di utenti unici e 25 milioni di pagine visualizzate ogni mese. Sui siti Anso vengono pubblicate più di 500 notizie al giorno. L’associazione annuncia Benedetto Liberati, editore marchigiano e anch’egli membro del consiglio direttivo, avvierà nei prossimi mesi una sua indagine, per capire un settore in forte sviluppo negli ultimi due anni.

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