I wrote this up earlier this year and thought – maybe you know of a similar project that could get this idea off the drawing board….

This community news platform is designed to collect and disseminate information in the public interest for communities too small to be effectively served by a traditional daily news source and makes real-time community-based news reporting as familiar as picking up the phone.?

• Messages are published and delivered via voice, email, web browsers, web feeds, and mobile applications.
• These messages could communicate a real estate transaction, car accident, block party, garage sale, the current status of a major infrastructure project, show photos of recent storm damage, or document vandalism.
• Each message published is automatically categorized by content and geographic location within the community.
• Community members retrieve messages by location, content, or contributor.
• Community members sign up to receive notification of a specific location’s messages in their preferred medium (voice, email, web browser, etc).

How is this different than something like Twitter, Facebook, or Yammer?

Like those services, it’s best when applied to a distinct community. Unlike those services – this system is open source (NEA) and a platform-agnostic (it receives input from and outputs to multiple mediums).