SAN FRANCISCO, March 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- Hundreds of NetSquared (http://www.netsquared.org) community members cast their votes to determine the best ideas for a Web mashup designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe.
Mashups typically combine two or more publicly available data sources, presented in a format that is both visually compelling and easy to navigate (for a more complete definition, see Wikipedia's entry on mashups at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29).
The 21 Mashup Challenge finalists, who will be brought to the NetSquared Conference on May 27 and 28 in San Jose to compete for a share of the $100,000 Award, are (in alphabetical order):
A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms - Social Actions
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/mashup-social-actions
Anti-Genocide Action Tracker: Genocide Scores for Every Legislator and State
Ask Your Lawmaker: Connecting Local Communities to their Lawmakers
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/ask-your-lawmaker-national-local
Assetmap.org/Uganda
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/assetmap-org-uganda
City of New Orleans: A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/wholesale-demolition-new-orleans-neighborhoods
CorpWatch - Government Data on Corporations
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/corpwatch-government-data-corporations
Freecycle Cellular Osmosis
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/freecycle-cellular-osmosis
Greener One
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/greener-one
KnowMore.org Firefox Extension - Get Alerts of Corporate Abuses When You Visit Company/Brand/Product Web sites
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/knowmore-org-firefox-extension
Map This!
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/map
MAPLight.org: Mapping Money and Politics
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/mapping-money-and-politics-maplight-org
MetaVid: Community Video Archive Project
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/metavid-community-video-archive-project
MoveSmart.org
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/movesmart-org-beta
My Green Map: Sharing your Sustainable Worldview
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/my-green-map
OneWorld Connect
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/world-connect
OpenCongress.org: Track Congress with Social Data
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/opencongress-org-track-congress-social-data
Rosetta Project - Minority Languages in Google Earth
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/rosetta-project-minority-languages-google-earth
Squarepeg - Change is social
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/squarepeg-llc
Ushahidi: Mapping Reports of Post-Election Violence in Kenya
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/ushahidi
Volunteer Now! - By mobile phone
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/volunteer-now
Your Mapper - Know your neighborhood
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/your-mapper
"NetSquared lives in the space between the social missions that nonprofits are seeking to achieve on the ground and the incredible communications and advocacy possibilities offered by the new social media," said Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup (http://www.techsoup.org), the nonprofit behind NetSquared. "There's a huge amount of hype out there, and consequently there is a backlash - many great nonprofits that don't allow themselves to discover what is now possible. We are thrilled at the sweet spot the Mashup Challenge has uncovered. Nonprofits - 122 of them from countries as diverse as Kenya, Italy, Estonia, the Eastern Carribean, Lebanon, United Kingdom, and Peru - came up with brilliant ideas, and technologists have responded with equal enthusiasm about turning these dreams into reality."
The Top 21 projects listed above, which were chosen from a field of 122 entries, will get an opportunity to display and discuss their Mashups with the 350 conference participants - including venture capitalists, philanthropy experts, Web developers and social activists. The three top projects, as decided by a vote of conference participants, will divide most of a $100,000 Technology Innovation Fund raised by TechSoup for the Conference. Remaining funds will be split among the rest of the participating projects.
About NetSquared (http://www.netsquared.org)
NetSquared's mission is to spur responsible adoption of social Web tools by social benefit organizations. Nonprofits and NGOs thrive on relationships, which means the social Web holds tremendous potential to transform their effectiveness and impact. One of the highlights of this ongoing project is the annual NetSquared conference, which will be held on May 27-28, 2008 in San Jose and will feature 21 mashup projects chosen by the community. NetSquared is produced by the nonprofit technology Web resource TechSoup (www.techsoup.org), which offers a wealth of information on products, applications, best practices, online forums, and ideas on nonprofit tech topics from networking to open source and Web 2.0. It also gives its 400,000 unique monthly visitors access to the TechSoup Stock (http://www.techsoup.org/stock) service, which offers hundreds of hardware and software products donated by leading providers such as Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, Intuit, and Adobe, as well as certified refurbished computers. Since its inception in January 2002, the service has distributed more than 2.7 million products to nonprofits in North America, Europe, and Africa, at a retail value of over $770 million.
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CONTACT: Franziska Marks, 415-633-9336, fmarks@techsoup.org
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