RobsHouse.net

NowPublic.com has launched! Aimed at changing the way news is generated and empowering the little guy with the camera, it introduces a mechanism by which normal people can “demand” coverage of a breaking story and by which reporters can locate assignments in their area and assertain the public’s interest in them. Combine that with a groovy way to put “smart” images and other media on your blog or website and you have the beginnings of something viral and explosive.

The project started (for me, at least) in September, 2004, when Michael Tippett of BlueHereNow Technologies, Inc. contacted me about designing and programming “an ambitious project” based on Drupal. One of the things that fascinated me about the project from the onset was the intricate role that Tippett and his project leader, Michael Meyers, had envisioned for Flash movies. The idea was that all of the media assets on the site be served embedded in Flash objects such that they are able to interact with the site in meaningful ways. Furthermore, these “Smart Media” objects were to be given away to the blogosphere for free, to be included in blogs and websites around the world. Yet even on 3rd party sites like RobsHouse.net, they were to interact with NowPublic.com directly. Here is an example Smart Media object covering the DrupalCon conference that took place in Antwerp in February:

When you move your mouse over the image you will see that it is more than just a photograph. The “file” and “help” menus are active and offer real functionality. You can “Put this media on your blog” by copying the generated JavaScript onto your webpage. You can login or register for a user account on the NowPublic.com site. You can contact the owner of the photo. You can post comments to the NowPublic.com site, all from this Flash movie.

This functionality is all made possible through Drupal’s support of XML-RPC. The JavaScript which you copy to your blog loads another JavaScript file from the NowPublic.com site, which in turn loads the Flash movie. The Flash movie, in turn, makes a series of XML-RPC calls to interact with the site.

One of the goals throughout the entire project has been to put Drupal to the test as a rapid prototyping framework for complicated sites and applications. At every step of the way the programming team was expected to show that our decision to use an open source CMS as a basis was a real enabling factor in terms of meeting schedules and leveraging highly functional code. Drupal has exceeded our expectations so far in this respect.

One potential use of NowPublic.com will be as a means of discovery for people or agencies looking for photographs to publish in other media channels. Take, for example, my brilliant masterpiece, the photo “Red Pitcher”:

One of the first problems of putting an image on a website for the world to see is that images which appear in your browser can be saved directly to your hard drive and used without the image owner being able to know or prevent this from happening. The practical implication is that a photographer with a great photo (like “Red Pitcher”) cannot advertise her works online for fear of having them stolen. Not so with NowPublic’s Smart Media. The photographer can rest assured that the Smart Media object will be copied hundreds or thousands of times but the image will not be stolen. In fact, it is encouraged to copy the Smart Media - that’s what the “Copy This Media” link in the menu is for! Should anyone want to buy “Red Pitcher”, or license it for inclusion in print or on another website, they can contact me directly using the Smart Media functions provided.

Also important to the process of revolutionizing reporting is the ability for the legions of folks toting camera phones to send their photos to the site as they snap them. A “citizen reporter” in the field, armed with the latest Nokia, just might be there when the next big thing happens. He captures the crucial moment, sends the image to news@nowpublic.com using his phone’s email function, and the whole world can see what he saw, all within minutes. Furthermore, news agencies looking for footage are in a position to pay him for his work and use his photo without worrying that the original image in its full resolution has already been propagated through the P2P networks and chatrooms.

NowPublic.com is still in beta stage - we expect to find problems. The list of upcoming features and improvements is also very long, so watch this space for good things to come!