NewsCloud is an open source platform that reduces barriers for community groups integrating news-based social networks into their existing Web sites. NewsCloud seeks funds to make its platform as easy to install and extend as Wikimedia, Drupal, et al
NewsCloud is not only a social network where people can share, rank and discuss news, it’s also a platform for supporting emerging journalistic voices and launching a variety of grassroots media Web sites.
The purpose of this proposal is to invest resources in making the NewsCloud open source platform easier for groups to adopt and use; making NewsCloud as plug and play and configurable as other open source tools such as WordPress, Wikimedia and Drupal.
The NewsCloud open source platform can reduce barriers to entry for grassroots and community organizations launching social news sites and utilizing social networks.
NewsCloud has been designed to allow grassroots groups and community organizations to easily add news-based social networks to their existing Web sites, either as customizable NewsCloud groups or by launching their own platform installation.
Resources from the Netsquared community and funders would allow us to strengthen these features and capabilities and make them more easily accessible to a broader audience.
To date, NewsCloud has been built primarily by one person, Jeff Reifman, at a cost of less than $15,000, yet it’s robust and feature-rich, with tremendous potential. Additional resources will help make NewsCloud into a mainstream open source platform.
An easier to use NewsCloud platform will help hundreds, possibly thousands of groups enhance the connection between their organizations, current events and their membership.
As use of NewsCloud grows, the possibility of new innovations that leverage the entire network of installed platforms and their organizations become possible - enhancing the prospects for positive social change.
To date, the NewsCloud Web site earns revenue from contextual advertising. Ad-free subscriptions, community membership and developer association fees are possible future revenue streams.
NewsCloud receives many requests from non-technical customers wishing to find help for hosting the platform. Therefore, a NewsCloud application provider/consulting group could generate additional revenue.
Donors may also choose to support development of NewsCloud's open source platform.
The NewsCloud Web site also offers a potential social and financial return for community-minded investors. Funds from the Web site may be used to subsidize the platform development and to expand outreach for citizen journalism and grassroots media.
To date, funding and limited resources have been the primary obstacles.
NewsCloud's founder has been limited in what he can accomplish on his own - in the ease of use and documentation quality of the open source platform, end user features on the Web site, graphic design and outreach efforts and materials.
Competition in the social media space is also intense - and competes for mindshare.
As the NetSquared innovation awards are limited, NewsCloud will view this as an opportuntity to complete specific work to make our open source platform more accessible and as an opportunity to expand awareness of our efforts in the socially aware Internet community.
NewsCloud will use funding from this award to hire a developer for three months to work on improving every aspect of our open source development platform. This is fully described below under key milestones.
NewsCloud also needs volunteers to participate in development of its open source platform. It will use exposure and participation in the NetSquared community to reach out to potential volunteers.
NewsCloud could also benefit from expanded financial resources for software development, outreach, system administration, technical writing, graphic design and marketing/PR materials. We will pursue these at future opportunities.
If NewsCloud receives additional resources, it will hire an open source software developer in Seattle and formalize its project plan to review with the Netsquared and open source communities.
Milestone 1 - 30 Days
* Writing a simple web-form driven installation script for the open source platform on popular flavors of Linux, Mac and Windows. This will make installation of NewsCloud as simple as that of WordPress, Wikimedia and Drupal.
* Upgrading and regression testing the platform on the latest versions of Apache 2.x, PHP 5.x and MySQL 5.x. This will make NewsCloud hostable by even more organizations. Currently NewsCloud is tested and runs on Apache 1.3, MySql 4.x and PHP 4.x.
* International localization for the site and database to allow NewsCloud to be used worldwide
Milestone 2 - 60 days
* Reaching out to the open source developer community for broader involvement, expanding the documentation on our Wiki for all areas of the platform
* Hosting a web-based bug tracking and feature request tool
* Make the platform simpler to administrate settings and CRON tasks
* Improving the documentation of the current open source platform code and writing tutorials and examples to extending the system.
Milestone 3 - 90 days
* Respond to feature requests from open source adopters to make the platform even more useful to them
* Improve the functionality of NewsCloud groups and journals to make it easier for organizations to adopt portions of the NewsCloud system without having to host the entire platform themselves; this would include enhancements to our Smarty-based templating system to make it easier for groups to customize their Web sites
* Integrate OpenID client/server support
* Improve the cross-browser compatibility of the current NewsCloud templates especially IE 6.x
* Look at writing plug-ins for Firefox, Drupal, Plone and WordPress if time and resources allow.
* Write a post-mortem of the Netsquared process. What did we accomplishment? What have we learned? What would we do different?
NewsCloud is not only a social network where people can share, rank and discuss news, it’s also a platform for supporting emerging journalistic voices and launching a variety of grassroots media Web sites.
The purpose of this proposal is to invest resources in making the NewsCloud open source platform easier for groups to adopt and use; making NewsCloud as plug and play and configurable as other open source tools such as WordPress, Wikimedia and Drupal.
NewsCloud has been designed to allow grassroots groups and community organizations to easily add news-based social networks to their existing Web sites, either as customizable NewsCloud groups or by launching their own platform installation.
Resources from the Netsquared community and funders would allow us to strengthen these features and capability and make them more easily accessible to a broader audience.
At NewsCloud, citizen journalism is free of the constraints of for-profit, proprietary technologies and closed communities. As an open source project, NewsCloud is essentially a community-owned broadcasting platform whose future can be shaped by anyone interested in contributing to its development. And because it’s in the public domain, it can’t be taken away.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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Comments
whats new?
and how is this project different from digg?
Digg isn't an open source platform
NewsCloud has been designed from the ground up to be an open source platform which provides tools for launching media sites and integrating current events with other organizations' existings blogs and sites. Digg is a proprietary, closed system, you can't install it for your project.
SUPORTING AND VOTING FOR NEW INDEPENDENE
This project for people with disability is much needed project in India and abroad.
The related issues and the Rehab for people with disabilites is much requiered
awareness plus such technological base reab facilities that are run by a profetional
Medical Team and equipped with latgest produts and services as stated in NINA'S
Project Proposal. India needs desperately these kind of facilities.Too many people
are suffering for lack of facilities.
Jaspal chug
Response to supporting+votingfor New Independence New Abilities
Dear Mr. Chug,
Thank you for your kind and generous vote, and your wonderful supporting comments.
It is with the encouragement of people like yourself, that enable us to provide our services to the people in need, such as People with Disabilities. Please keep spreading the awareness.
In the Spirit of Humanity,
Nina
Self-funding
Thanks Jeff
I'll take a look at your project now.
Fulfilling a great idea
Newscloud is great community moderated news, and the quality of the articles that get promoted there have definitely proved that this great idea can fly in practice. It's also easy to add articles to take part in the moderating. I've been using it long enough to see that the site functionality and design have been steadily improving as well, and am looking forward to what the future will bring.
NewsCloud - for news junkies and non-news junkies!
Excellent Project
Having installed and used probably all of the main and well-known open source cms, blog and social-style software offerings, this project seems head and shoulders above many of them in terms of how it is likely to help ordinary people find a voice to share and co-ordinate with other people or groups. It richly deserves more recognition and funding. The main stumbling block to wider adoption and thus a wider audience of users would seem to be the lack of ease of installation. I hope this is something which can be corrected in the near future and hope to see this project achieve a much higher profile. Best wishes for all those concerned. Keep up the good work!