The NewsCloud Blog

Poynter: Experimental Facebook Use Rewards News Readers

Nice article by Tara George at Poynter on our Facebook application news community at the MnDaily: Experimental Facebook Use Rewards News Readers.

Universities interested in using the Facebook application technology to publish their own news sites in Facebook can either use the MnDaily source code and customize and operate it themselves, or they can hire us to run it as a service for them.

Many people confuse Facebook applications with Facebook's pages. This Facebook application is quite sophisticated and technically complex to install, customize, manage and host. Those wishing to run it themselves should be prepared with significant design and technical skill and capacity.

Run your own Facebook Application Community News site

We've set up an informational page about our Facebook Application Community News service. If you're interested in learning more about hiring NewsCloud to run a Facebook application community for your organization, please take a look there first.

Social Media Toolkit Release May '09 Preview

We've released the source code that serves as a base for Hot Dish and MnDaily applications - you can find it at http://github.com/newscloud/open-social-media-toolkit in the may09preview branch.

We encourage you to sign up for our developer forum at Google Groups. Please submit all feedback and questions to our developer community there: http://groups.google.com/group/newscloud/

Our next planned release is May 29, 2009. We'll include any necessary patches or helpers that we add based on feedback from the community.

Hot Dish Action Team winners announced! Drumroll, please.........

Hey Hot Dishers! 

We've reached the end of the Hot Dish Action Team contest!  Now, the moment you've all been waiting for.... 

Allison C. of Arizona is the lucky and hardworking Grand Prize winner of a trip to the Arctic, courtesy of Quark Expeditions! If you can believe it, Allison clocked in with over 47,000 points!! The ASU senior wants to be a travel journalist after she graduates, with a focus on environmentalism. She said her fave challenge was writing a letter to the editor, and three of hers were published  in local newspapers. Some of the other outstanding challenges she did were starting to compost, recycling her washing machine, and getting her gym to start recycling all the empty plastic water bottles people use. Congratulations, Allison!

The winner of the brand new, green MacBook is San Francisco resident Inna L., a green events planner who offset all the miles she drove last year, traded her car for an Ultra Motor A2b electric bike, and started an environmental committee in her condo complex. She also started a recycling program at her spouse's office and replaced her vinyl shower curtains with nontoxic linen ones.

New Jerseyan Dave S. started a recycling program at his father's workplace, got his letter to the editor about New Jersey transit published, and convinced his parents to offset their monthly electricity use with renewable energy credits. He also went to Pennsylvania for a Focus the Nation gathering for youth about clean energy.

JamieNicole B., an Indiana native, was an extremely active Hot Dish user despite being abroad in Australia, and she won $200 to be donated to a nonprofit of her choice. Among many other things, she made funny videos about greening your ride, travelling sustainably, and computing more efficiently.

Cristina B., another ASU student and one introduced to Hot Dish by grand prize winner Allison C., recycled many of her old electronics and replaced the light bulbs in her house with compact flourescent bulbs, winning her $200 to REI. Nature-loving vegan Kelly C. volunteered at her local humane society to get stray dogs adopted and switched to fair-trade, organic soap (among many other actions) and walked away with $200 to a yoga studio of her choice. Ian E. won $150 to Amazon.com for doing things like planting trees around San Jose with a non-profit urban forestry organization. Another San Jose resident, Andrew R., won $150 in vegan shoes for dressing up as a tree for Arbor Day and other actions.  Jennifer T. invited a ton of friends, earning her $100 donated to the nonprofit of her choice. Finally, Lauren S. scored a Solio solar charger for signing online petitions and offsetting her carbon from a trip home.

Thanks to everyone who participated! Special shout outs go to all our amazing sponsors that gave such generous prizes, including:

Quark Expeditions

Grist.org

Center for Biological Diversity

Equal Exchange

Born Free USA

Maria Coryell-Martin

Click here for an overview of all the winners