The latest C4FCM post from the Idea Lab blog:

While pitched as a way to create and visualize "open supply chains," Sourcemap's real virtue is that the data itself is fully sourced. Like the links at the bottom of a Wikipedia article and the accompanying edit history, you know exactly who added the data and where that data came from. You can take that data and make counter-visualizations if you feel the data isn't correctly represented. Sourcemap's very structure acknowledges that visualization is an editorial process and gives others a chance to work with the original data. For example, here's an example of a Sourcemap for an Ikea bed:

Read the rest at PBS MediaShift Idea Lab: "Sourcemap Makes Data Visualizations Transparent"

This week our development team announced the release of the LandmanReportCard (LRC), the first of our experiments in designing tools for community understanding and self-defense. We've chosen one of the most difficult community contexts imaginable: neighborhoods, mostly rural, that stand in the path of some of the richest and most powerful corporations in the world. In the mix are weak and compromised governments, a lack of local media, mutant baby goats, a toxic soup of industrial byproducts, unmatched potential for profits, flammable tap water, and a clean burning source of energy that may be central to national security.

Read the full article at PBS' MediaShift Idea Lab:
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/12/extract-civic-defense.html

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and PBS unveiled Idealab yesterday, a large and ambitious online thinktank on the future of community news in the digital age. Idealab features a long list of contributors; all of the bloggers are recipients of recent Knight News Challenge grants. The project is being edited by the capable Mark Glaser, who has been running PBS’ Mediashift for many years. Thus far, there are some pretty intriguing posts. I’ve spoken with some of these folks in my prior work as a print journalist; a few years ago, I interviewed Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism professor and author of Pressthink, for a feature story I wrote for the Village Voice on academic bloggers.