8. Geeky but Cool: Games, Widgets

(NOTE: This post is part of a series. Series index.)

Just a quick mention of some options from the “bleeding edge” that might be relevant to particular communities: Game-based storytelling and widgets.

Two interesting projects I’ll show for online “game-based” storytelling…

• The Nancybelle Project: Interactive literary journalism project currently under development. Using tools from the world of online video games to create an interactive, collaborative story about a beloved African-American community leader who played a key role in the early years of the Liz Claiborne Corporation. More about this project by its creator, Kim Pearson.



• Remembering 7th Street: Also under development, this project by UC Berkeley J-school prof. Paul Grabowicz recreates the vibrant predominantly African-American jazz scene in Oakland, CA from the 1950s. It’s more of a virtual environment than a game—kind of like Second Life meets history. More about this project.

Widgets (sometimes called “gadgets"): Creating a self-updating box that syndicates your content to other sites. I use several widgets to augment the content of my personal blog Contentious. Three basic kinds of widgets:

• Desktop (especially for Mac dashboard): Limited audience. Some news org activity here (like MSNBC)

• Online service: Syndication to personal pages on MyYahoo, iGoogle, Facebook, etc. More popular, but still limited. Very little direct news org activity here (Mail & Guardian does it), but some Facebook developers have rolled their own from news org feeds such as Reuters.

• Open syndication to Web sites: Potentially widest audience. News orgs seem to be lagging on this, but Google’s got it right. I think we need more of this.

9. General tips for community outreach...

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