Ed Note: one of Boingboing's three current guest bloggers, Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America. (You can see a video interview introducing the book here.) He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.
I've been so busy posting about Lost and Candy Land, that I haven't had a chance to say anything about what we're working on at outside.in, which in many ways has been the most exciting project of all for me over the past few years.
When John Geraci and I first started tossing around ideas for the site, our common passion and interest had been this notion that geographic space–and particularly urban space–had an invisible layer of data flowing through it that was tantalizingly close to you as you explored a neighborhood, but that was generally inaccessible other than through the chains of face-to-face, word-of-mouth conversation. Not only were there a million stories in the big city, there were a million in every neighborhood, and a thousand on every block: the overpriced condo that sold last week; the new bar that just got denied a liquor license; the mugging that took place a few months ago; the school principal that everyone's thrilled with. (This is what Dan Hill wonderfully describes in The Street As Platform.) All this data was out there in people's heads — and increasingly in local placeblogger sites — but there was no easy way to discover it geographically. There was no easy way to say: I'm standing on this corner in this town — what are the locals talking about right now?
So we started outside.in as an attempt to answer that question. The Radar service we launched last year was our first interface that really tried to give you that micro-local perspective. But one of the things that's become clear to us is that question–what's happening around me right now–is even more compelling and fascinating when you're asking it via a mobile device standing on a street corner. And so I'm just incredibly excited about the application we've just released for the iPhone, Outside.in Radar. You load it up, let it geo-locate you, and then you'll see all the blog posts, news stories, Tweets, and discussion threads that involve places within 1,000 feet of where you're standing. If one of those places sounds interesting, you can go check out a dedicated place that shows you all the stories we've tracked that are associated with that place. You can also zoom out to see all the stories in the neighborhood you're currently occupying, or the wider city.
There are a hundred iPhone apps that let you find a nearby Italian restaurant. And that's great — finding a nearby restaurant is a useful function. But I think a lot of us want something more out of the geo-web; we want the grain and the serendipity of human conversations and gossip to help us explore physical space. I think this app is a big first step in that direction. A couple of caveats, though. For now, it's U.S. only. And while it will sometimes find content outside of the top 100 or so urban areas in the U.S., there's much more data in the mid-sized to big cities. We're also actively working to speed up the load times–this first version is a little slow to fill up with data. (There will be a free upgrade that's faster shortly.) But if you walk around a few neighborhoods with it for a couple days, I think you'll find there's something genuinely new about the experience–it's like exploring a community with a neighborhood maven one tap away on your phone. And I know you'll immediately start thinking of other ways of using the data we've assembled over the past two years; the possibilities for new geo-interfaces are really extraordinary right now, and I'd love to hear any thoughts for v2 and beyond.
