First example:

Stringwire.com is a platform of videos created by users with a smartphone, and made avaliable to the public in real time. NBC News bought this platform to gain a foothold in the digital news space. It also allows people to share videos in their social networks. Although it is valuable when it comes to citizen participation in the construction of content, there are some flaws in its design, regarding to:

– Promoting a network between users. I couldn´t even find other user´s profiles;

– Seeing relations between locations. If you want to see the map in a wider window, it doesn’t allow you to open it in a new tab for example, and each map shows only the location of that specific video (it doesn´t show several locations in the same map).

– Searching themes. I couldn´t find the search engine (a field for putting key words in order to search a video of my interest);

– Organizing videos within a context. Apparently, there is no organization/classification of the videos, they´re only presented in a chronological order. Probably because the project is in its beta version.

Second example:

The following tool  – http://wikimapps.com/ – uses Google Maps to collaboratively map informations, such as:

– Making reports and exposing community problems;

– Providing social and humanitarian aid;

– Mapping culture and leisure, among others.

Regarding to connecting users, it is much better than the first example. The following image shows a network of friends you can engage in a map (this example shows a mapping of startups):

Regular users can:

• Make a record on the map (through points, lines and/or polygons);
• See the data of a record;
• Search records on the map;
• Search for addresses on the map;
• Filter records on the map;
• Comment on a record;
• Receive notifications;
• See record intensity spots (hot spots);
• Identify which are the most seen, commented and evaluated records.

This Wikimapps project fails in the bad graphic user interface and excess of advertisements.

It also doesn’t make any automatic relations between data and data visualization, such as http://dataviva.info/ does (a tool developed partially by the Macro Connections group from Media Lab).

Even though its complexity, Data Viva offers a great and intuitive user interface (the only reason it doesn’t fit in this assignment is that this project doesn’t seem to be crowd sourced (yet it is collaborative in its development between institutions).