Wow, I’m extremely impressed! Thakadu, a frequent visitor here and friend, has come out with a nice Google Maps and Yahoo News mashup that he’s simply calling News Map. Basically, he’s broken down the the finding of current news stories by country into the easiest common denominator – geography.
It’s actually much more than African news being mapped, it’s international. However, since it was created by someone within the African digerati circle, I took creative license in the title to this post.
Thakadu is also the creator of Muti, an African news aggregator. It takes submissions from registered users (much like Reddit and Digg), and stories go up or down depending upon how much they are read and voted on.
May 23, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Hi Hash
Thanks for your kind words about News Map. I am hoping that this can eventually be somehow incorporated into the Zangu vision. I will be making public another version soon that also incorporates photos relevant to the country from Flickr. (www.flickr.com) If any of your readers have any other ideas I would love to hear from them.
Regards
May 24, 2006 at 7:21 am
Flickr would be a neat addition. I also think your idea of putting some basic “facts” about the country being highlighted makes sense as well.
The trick will be to pick the right mashup material without cluttering up the experience.
By the way, all the kind words are well deserved.
May 25, 2006 at 7:50 am
Leser (http://vry.blogsome.com) has been assisting me with getting the country flag to display in the right hand news content box. Thanks Gerhard!
May 25, 2006 at 8:17 am
Having the country flag is a nice touch.
May 25, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Flipping brilliant. Web 2.0 kweli. Let me forward this to all my friends now.
You guys are really raising the bar, again and again.
May 25, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Mental, thanks for the compliments, but this one is really all Thakadu. He had the idea and did all the work on News Map. I’m just happy to be working on Zangu with such a guy.
May 26, 2006 at 6:07 am
This is simply awesome. Great job, Thakadu. i can hardly wait to see the result of adding flickr and the basic facts per country. By the way, i had never heard about Muti till i saw it above on one of the comments! There is something similar at http://afrikupdates.crispynews.com. Check it out!
May 28, 2006 at 7:08 am
Thanks for your comments Lawrence. I didnt know about http://afrikupdates.crispynews.com! It looks great. Keep an eye aout for Zangu (you can sign up right now to be a beta tester). At Zangu we hope to take the social bookmarking ideas in Muti and Crispynews to complete new level.
Regards