The NewsCloud Blog

Open Source Facebook Newsroom CMS Application Beta

Today, we're releasing a beta of our new open source Facebook Newsroom CMS application framework:

The Facebook Newsroom CMS framework is generic Facebook application code which can be quickly and easily installed, configured and customized for any small organization wanting to establish a sophisticated Web presence within the Facebook community. We hope this framework will drastically reduce the barrier to entry for organizations wishing to leverage Facebook. See our demonstration site at Facebook.

While Facebook has Groups and Pages that are easy to set up, they are also quite limited in functionality.  These features are not conducive to community-building, engagement or organizing. Until now, building a Facebook application with broader capabilities required a significant investment of $5  - $15,000 minimum. This framework provides the easiest, most customizable and economical solution for small and/or non profit organizations to run an application on Facebook.

It's essentially a start up kit for small organizations wishing to build a Facebook application without spending thousands of dollars. It's also a great starting point which can later be enhanced and extended with additional features. With just a few hours, a Web developer with basic PHP skills can launch your application. Hosting can even be obtained free for one year at Joyent (waiting list may exist for free accounts).

Since the framework is open source, it can grow over time as the development community contributes new capabilities. You can download the source at SourceForge or learn more at our Wiki.

Available Features

The default framework provides some basic pages (like a basic Web site or Drupal or Plone installation) e.g. Home page, Newsroom, Photos, Wall, Discussion Forum, Invitations page and About page. It also provides basic content management (CMS) features for customizing the site from within a Web-based management user interface which many users are already familiar with. Pages can be turned on or off or content edited in place.

The news features include integration with your organization's own RSS feed (from a blog or Web site) and the NewsCloud Newsroom which provides real time community-driven news content on a variety of topics. The NewsCloud Newsroom can also be fully customized. If you have a Drupal-based Web site, check out the Drupal NewsCloud module.

The CMS supports HTML blocks and iFrames to allow you to integrate advertising e.g. Google AdSense, fundraising e.g. ChipIn, photos e.g. Flickr slideshows and more.

See the generic demonstration site on Facebook for examples.

For updates, please check back at the NewsCloud blog or subscribe to our feed.

Newsroom Wiki Project Page

Download the code from SourceForge

Drupal Newsroom Module and demonstration site

Requirements

Facebook Developer account
Linux hosting with PHP 5.x (4.x with minor changes)/MySQL 4.x

Possible hosting options:

Joyent
JohnCompanies
Amazon S3  (may be a bit expensive for some organizations)

Questions?

Set up instructions are included in the readme file with the code download. As usual, please contact me via email at jeff@newscloud.com with any questions, bug reports or feature requests. Thanks all!

Debian Package Installer for NewsCloud Available

There is a Debian Package Installer for the June 2007 release of NewsCloud at SourceForge. Documentation for its use is on the Wiki.

Please give the instructions a try and let us know how this works for you. We wanted to get the installer out into people's hands but we haven't had a lot of resources to test it.

If there are developer folks who would like to see more resources poured into making the NewsCloud platform more robust and easier to install, please donate at SourceForge.

Technorati Tags: debian, newscloud, package installer

Please review NewsCloud's NetSquared Project Nomination

If you haven't yet, please read and post feedback to our NetSquared Project Nomination:

Expanding access to the NewsCloud Open Source Media Platform

Technorati Tags: netsquared, newscloud, open source platforms

NewsCloud for Organizations

I've written up an initial guide for organizations such as community groups and NGOs who wish to make use of NewsCloud. Basically, there are five levels of integration available:

Level One: Add NewsCloud headlines to your Web site or blog

Level Two: Create a Journal to clip headlines from around the Web for your Web site or blog

Level Three: Create a Group for multiple staff or member stakeholders to track and clip headlines on related topics for your blog or Web site

Level Four: Invite your stakeholders to participate in news gathering for your organization

Level Five: Host your own installation of the NewsCloud software at your own Web site

See Guide for Organizations on our Wiki for the full document.

Technorati Tags: guide for organizations, newscloud for organizations, newscloud for groups

NewsCloud Nominated at Netsquared

We've nominated NewsCloud to be one of the twenty featured Netsquared innovators projects: Expanding Access to the NewsCloud Open Source Media Platform.

The NetSquared Conference (N2Y2) will center on 20 social change projects, and aim to bring together funders, developers, NTAPs, and other people and organizations that can bring these projects to the next level. We are creating a Technology Innovation Fund to provide direct cash support to projects selected by the NetSquared Community.

You can see a list of the nominated projects here.

If you would like to see additional resources awarded to developing the NewsCloud platform, please register at Netsquared, comment on our nomination and remember to vote for us between April 9th - 14th, 2007.

Technorati Tags: netsquared, newscloud, open source, social networks, cms

Debian Installation Instructions for NewsCloud

There are now step by step Debian Installation instructions for NewsCloud which have been tested against a JVDS LinuxStandard1 VPS ($20/mo). Although they should work well on any Debian 3.1 installation.

Technorati Tags: jvds, debian, newscloud, newscloud hosting

NewsCloud Hosting Options

We're now listing hosting options for NewsCloud on our Wiki. Currently, we recommend two: JohnCompanies and JVDS. The JohnCompanies Linux VPS starts at $47 per month. 10% discount on VPS if you say NewsCloud referred you. Deeper discount available for student/nonprofit. 5% discount on dedicated servers. At JVDS, the StandardLinux1 VPS is $20 per month (3 Months = 5% discount, 6 Months = 7.5%, 12 Months = 10% discount). We tested the new Debian Installation instructions against the JVDS account, but it should work well at either place.

Technorati Tags: johncompanies, newscloud hosting, newscloud, jvds, debian

NewsCloud Mentioned on NewAssignment

David Cohn posted about our open source release at NewAssignment:

For obvious reasons open source journalism tends to focus on text and content. The long term goal, however, isn’t just to create individual articles or investigations, but develop a method for citizen journalists to collaborate online. Having an open codebase like NewsCloud’s, with customizable reader pages and nightly autoposting to blogs, will benefit the efforts of anyone trying to create a citizen journalism site. Sharing information, of all kinds, can only help the practice move forward.

Amen. Thanks David.

Link

Technorati Tags: newassignmment, newscloud

Updates on NewsCloud Source Code Release

Thanks everyone for the great responses to our source code release.

Unfortunately, the .htaccess file was left out of the first code distribution, but it's available here until we update the distros.

If you need set up instructions - check out our wiki. If you'd like to help us write the Linux installation notes, that would be welcome.

If you want support, email us or post at our Discussion Forum which we monitor regularly.

Thanks for your support.

-Jeff

Technorati Tags: newscloud

NewsCloud Released as Open Source Media Platform

As Americans, we face a number of critical challenges: our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats to national security, rising costs of health care and college, rising federal debt, rising prison population, weak public schools, problems with our election system, decline of the middle class, global warming, energy independence, recovery from Hurricane Katrina, etc. The list goes on... Deep and thoughtful media coverage will be essential to help inform us to address these challenges in creative and constructive ways. Media consolidation, control by private corporations and the profit motive is often a barrier to quality and open, vibrant journalism.

While the blogosphere has dramatically expanded the ability for important stories and diverse views to get traction, it's important for the platforms which promote mainstream news, blogs and citizen-powered journalism to be open to public access. While there are a number of social network journalism platforms that allow a wide variety of original content, none of the latest Web 2.0 generation so far are licensed to the open source community to inspect, re-purpose and improve.

Today, we released code for NewsCloud to the open source community with a GPL license. Now other organizations can repurpose our platform to expand their own efforts or simply to improve the features they want to see in our site.

The NewsCloud platform is written in PHP and MySQL. Visit the NewsCloud site at SourceForge to download the code. Visit our Developer Wiki to get more information. There are a number of ways for developers to get involved with us. We've also set up a Google Groups discussion forum for developers. If you just want to integrate your site with NewsCloud, our pre-existing REST-based PHP class of Web Services API is still available.

One of the coolest things about the NewsCloud platform is its expanding use of Smarty as a template engine to individuals and groups to fully customize the look and feel of their content without having to host their own server.

As always, visit the NewsCloud Blog (or RSS feed) to stay up to date on development updates.

NewsCloud's Top Journalism Beats for 2007

NewsCloud readers are currently voting on the top citizen journalism beats for 2007. Voting concludes December 31st and results will be announced in January.

About NewsCloud

NewsCloud began in 2004 as CommonBits, a community directory for distributing political videos via BitTorrent. It evolved into CommonTimes, a social network for news and was rebranded as NewsCloud.com in May 2006. NewsCloud is primarily the work of Jeff Reifman, a former Microsoft technologist and free-lance journalist and co-founded by Garrett Moon, a computer science student at Western Washington University.

Technorati Tags: newscloud, citizen journalism, open source, programming, media reform, blogging