A while ago I wrote about making use of information collected by websites – I find graphs a great way to do this. And while there are lots of great graphing objects, or tools available today, it can be a hectic scene to try and find a free one that you want for basic use. So quick modifications to existing code can sometimes be exactly what you need! Below is the code that was used to create the graphs seen in that previous post.
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Posts Tagged ‘user generated content’
Creating Line Graphs in JPEG Format through PHP
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
Crowdsourcing User Generated Content for your weekends!
Thursday, August 6th, 2009Yesterday I wrote about the concepts behind crowdsourcing and user-generated content (UGC), and the idea behind the post was that by using the collective intelligence of everyone on the internet that you could engage in, and learn, some incredibly useful things.
The biggest requirements however, are direction and structure. When totally unstructured environments are created – then the content can go any in direction, and it may not necessarily be directly related to what you want.
Take Facebook for instance: it provides an open area for content to be created – but with defined structures so that everything is consistent. This ensures that not too much deviation is seen from page to page. Thereby making browsing through profiles and applications much easier – the interface and the information on each page is considered relevant to the previous page. You know where to look for a particular link, you understand what each button is likely to do, and you have some degree of confidence about what you are going to see on the next page.
On the other hand, if you think about blogs, each and every blog is completely different and there doesn’t necessarily have to be any consistent structure. Photo blogs are different to text blogs to start, and text blogs differ not only just on layout but the type of content that they may be presenting.
Both are examples of user-generated content, and both demonstrate the difference between structured environments and unstructured environments. And both, contain massive amounts of useful information! So the challenge we were working with, was to understand how we could merge the two so that it became useful in a structured manner. We wanted to put together something which helped people decide what they want to do on weekends, and where to go on holiday.
With that in mind, we put together a user-generated content application, that relies on crowdsourcing to measure the reliability of user suggestions. And in order to make available much greater information, the application is designed to be linked to blogs with deeper information about the same content. What does all of this mean? Let me walk you through what we’re doing…
We’ve created a space for people to highlight and write “mini-reviews” on places worth seeing, or going to. So if you’ve visited a place recently that you think is noteworthy – in a either a positive or negative fashion, then you can write a mini review within 60 seconds about the place.
So, now image that lots of people write these reviews after they’ve been out for the weekend, or on holiday. Very quickly, there’s a lot of things to read through about places that you can go, and what that other person thought of. If the reviewer wants to provide more information, then the review can link back into their blog so that any interested reader can find out more. That’s the user-generated part, and on it’s own, would produce a lot of reading material!
The next question then becomes – how you sift through all of this to figure where to go, and what to avoid? And there’s where our idea of using the crowd sourcing element comes in.
While people go about making reviews, we thought that it would be good if those that are liked get bumped back up to the top and earn a point. That way, others that notice the item – if they still like it, can bump it back up again by liking it.
Very quickly, the most liked entry at that time stays at the top. As the place is visited by everyone and stops proving to earn “new” points (i.e. by different people) it slowly begins to fall off the top 40 list as newer more liked places replace it.
We thought that this would be a great way for people to find new places to go on the weekend and before they go on holiday! There’s nothing like going to a new city, and checking out a recommended club or bar by a friend that went there 3 months ago – only to find that the place has shut down. Then where do you go? (That happened to us!)
So we’re trying to help others in that same predicament by putting this out there!
If you have any suggestions or ideas on how we can make this better – then please let us know!
You can find the application today on Facebook at http://www.venuemirror.com/facebook
Thanks!
K
Crowdsourcing user-generated content so that it’s useful!
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009“Crowdsourcing” is one of those “new” internet words that Wiktionary defines as: “delegating a task to a large diffuse group, usually without monetary compensation”. It’s an incredible feature of the internet, and makes use of all those willing to share their thoughts or opinions on various topics.
The first articles about the concept hit mainstream media in 2006 through large magazines like Wired, and BusinessWeek. Coverage has continued over the years as the use of the concept has increased with ReadWriteWeb and even the Economist covering it.
Social networks like Facebook are based on a different premise known as “user-generated content” (UGC). UGC “refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users” according to Wikipedia. Social networking websites are great examples of this because they are typically structured environment for users to create material that is interesting to others.
UGC enables the public themselves to express their opinions, and this was initially noticed through the blogging craze that swept the globe. Now large media houses such as the BBC use UGC portals when researching and tracking major events. Blogs are definitely here to stay, as they provide great insight into thoughts, opinions, and happenings all over the globe that you may never have found otherwise!
Twitter is an incredible portal that allows for micro-blogging, thus becoming a hotspot for UGC – and even lends itself to live crowdsourcing of opinions across hot current topics.
When you put this all together – it represents a great way to discover new things, that you can have great confidence in being trustworthy! Tomorrow – I’ll post an article about how we think this can help you with your travels!
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