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Since we're new and eager, here is a list of nifty things that can be done on CityTools.
Unlike most lists, these aren't presented in any order because if one of these items floats your boat, then that's the most important...1We have a rich, flexible view of geography
When we say, "we're local" it can get tricky. I might consider myself a resident of San Francisco, so that's what I think about when I say local.
But my next door neighbor might consider herself a resident of the Bay Area first and San Francisco second.
To address this we've created a cascading geographic model. If you specify a specific city -- or even a neighborhood! -- as your "home" when you click "home" on listing pages you only see content from that area or areas underneath it.
However, if you specify "home" to be a larger area, you see eveything under the level you set.
For example, if I set San Francisco as home when I want to see local stories, I only see stories from San Francisco, not Los Angeles.
If I set California to be my home, when I want to see "local" stories, I see everything in San Francisco, Los Angeles and any level beneath the "California" level.
The CityTools cascading geographic model allow you to define what home means for you.
And whenever you're looking at story lists in a single locale, you'll see a list of the higher levels in a ribbon on the page. Click a different level and you go there immediately.
If you want to find a location to visit try the link on this item's title.
But my next door neighbor might consider herself a resident of the Bay Area first and San Francisco second.
To address this we've created a cascading geographic model. If you specify a specific city -- or even a neighborhood! -- as your "home" when you click "home" on listing pages you only see content from that area or areas underneath it.
However, if you specify "home" to be a larger area, you see eveything under the level you set.
For example, if I set San Francisco as home when I want to see local stories, I only see stories from San Francisco, not Los Angeles.
If I set California to be my home, when I want to see "local" stories, I see everything in San Francisco, Los Angeles and any level beneath the "California" level.
The CityTools cascading geographic model allow you to define what home means for you.
And whenever you're looking at story lists in a single locale, you'll see a list of the higher levels in a ribbon on the page. Click a different level and you go there immediately.
If you want to find a location to visit try the link on this item's title.
2Everything can be localized
Out of the gates, CityTools offers members the ability to share stories, create original stories, make dynamic lists that can be made local in more than 57,000 areas of the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.
And you can do the same thing on a national level pretty much anywhere in the world.
You gotta admit, if all we did was permit highly local citizen journalism and shared news across the majority of the English speaking world that would be cool enough. And we do so much more!
Oh, and yes, soon CityTools will branch out into non-English languages.
And you can do the same thing on a national level pretty much anywhere in the world.
You gotta admit, if all we did was permit highly local citizen journalism and shared news across the majority of the English speaking world that would be cool enough. And we do so much more!
Oh, and yes, soon CityTools will branch out into non-English languages.
3We're multilingual!
CityTools is currently offered in 13 languages -- more coming soon. And we even offer you the ability to read, write and share stories in one or more of these languages at once.
You read that right: you can see stories in more than one language at the same time. If you speak English and Spanish and want to see stories in both languages, it's easy.
Just follow the link to "your profile" on the left hand menu and you can set your primary and secondary language preferences.
Yes, we're a bilingual site. A multilingual site.
See, that's the way we roll here. You determine what CityTools looks like -- the location, the topic, the languages -- based on the the context of your life.
We're just here to cheer you on, baby.
Currently we support: English, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, German, French, Polish, Tagalog, Portuguese and Italian.
Support for Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian are coming soon.
You read that right: you can see stories in more than one language at the same time. If you speak English and Spanish and want to see stories in both languages, it's easy.
Just follow the link to "your profile" on the left hand menu and you can set your primary and secondary language preferences.
Yes, we're a bilingual site. A multilingual site.
See, that's the way we roll here. You determine what CityTools looks like -- the location, the topic, the languages -- based on the the context of your life.
We're just here to cheer you on, baby.
Currently we support: English, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, German, French, Polish, Tagalog, Portuguese and Italian.
Support for Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian are coming soon.
4CityTools Lists are consensus engines
Our lists -- you're reading one now -- are fun by themselves.
However, when people begin to link lists into families, they become much more than a simple collection of people's viewpoints. They become engines to deliver consensus.
For example, say I create a list called "Things my school system needs" and you link a list to that describing what YOUR school system needs.
When a reader of one of those lists clicks the "show consensus" link they can see our combined list, weighted by our agreed-upon importance.
That's cool if you have two lists about a topic. But if you have hundreds of people participating in this "list family" suddenly you get a detailed view of what people think their school system needs.
The list consensus can be about fun things (here are my favorite movies) or serious (problems in my city) or in between (best sushi restaurants). It doesn't matter, CityTools lists are living things.
And because the lists, like everything else here, can be made specific to geography, you can see the consensus amongst people in your home region or everywhere and anything in between. Woot!
We call our lists living documents and you're going to see a lot more living document features in other realms. What you see on CityTools today is only about 10 percent of our grand plan.
However, when people begin to link lists into families, they become much more than a simple collection of people's viewpoints. They become engines to deliver consensus.
For example, say I create a list called "Things my school system needs" and you link a list to that describing what YOUR school system needs.
When a reader of one of those lists clicks the "show consensus" link they can see our combined list, weighted by our agreed-upon importance.
That's cool if you have two lists about a topic. But if you have hundreds of people participating in this "list family" suddenly you get a detailed view of what people think their school system needs.
The list consensus can be about fun things (here are my favorite movies) or serious (problems in my city) or in between (best sushi restaurants). It doesn't matter, CityTools lists are living things.
And because the lists, like everything else here, can be made specific to geography, you can see the consensus amongst people in your home region or everywhere and anything in between. Woot!
We call our lists living documents and you're going to see a lot more living document features in other realms. What you see on CityTools today is only about 10 percent of our grand plan.
5CityTools teams: powerful tools for community organizations
In much the same manner as we provide instant social news and citizen journalism across most of the English speaking world, we also allow all community organizations special tools for them.
Whether it's a PTA organization, a club, a non-profit organization, or simply a group of like-minded people, CityTools teams allow organizations to instantly share news, create original content and lists.
Better still, because of the way our teams are organized, if a community organization wants to open things up for their whole constiuency, they may. Or if they want to permit only staff to participate they can do that too.
You can even do both -- have one team for a community organization's staff and a similarly titled team for the organization's constiuency.
This allows civic organizations and people with shared interest to mobilize like minded individuals.
When you think about the entire toolset as it exists today, you could use it to create full-fledged online publications with an entire editing chain.
Want to create a high-school newspaper or a neighborhood news service right now? It would take a few minutes on CityTools.
Whether it's a PTA organization, a club, a non-profit organization, or simply a group of like-minded people, CityTools teams allow organizations to instantly share news, create original content and lists.
Better still, because of the way our teams are organized, if a community organization wants to open things up for their whole constiuency, they may. Or if they want to permit only staff to participate they can do that too.
You can even do both -- have one team for a community organization's staff and a similarly titled team for the organization's constiuency.
This allows civic organizations and people with shared interest to mobilize like minded individuals.
When you think about the entire toolset as it exists today, you could use it to create full-fledged online publications with an entire editing chain.
Want to create a high-school newspaper or a neighborhood news service right now? It would take a few minutes on CityTools.
6All CityTools teams have special RSS channels
All teams on CityTools have their own RSS feed -- heck, that alone is a good enough reason to create a team!
Whenever you update your shared news, you automatically update the RSS feed. You don't have to do a thing other than add shared news or write new stories.
Is that cool or what?
Whenever you update your shared news, you automatically update the RSS feed. You don't have to do a thing other than add shared news or write new stories.
Is that cool or what?
7CityTools team content can show up on your website
If you have a team on CityTools, you can present your team's headlines on your own website by adding a few lines of code to it.
Afterwards, whenever you update your team content on CityTools, it's instantly updated on your own website as well.
All team content you create can be styled to fit the needs of your web design. See the docs and howto section for more information.
Afterwards, whenever you update your team content on CityTools, it's instantly updated on your own website as well.
All team content you create can be styled to fit the needs of your web design. See the docs and howto section for more information.
8Sharing stories is easy
You can either use the existing "share stories" interface on the left bar or, if you really get our vibe, you can put our "quicktool" on your FireFox or IE menu bar.
With the quick tool installed, when you're ANYWHERE on the net, you can highlight some text, click the link and share the story with others.
You can find the quicktool linked from the title of this item.
With the quick tool installed, when you're ANYWHERE on the net, you can highlight some text, click the link and share the story with others.
You can find the quicktool linked from the title of this item.
9The RSS newsdesk makes finding stories to share easy
To help you to easily find stories to share with others, we've created what we call the RSS Newsdesk. I consists of the recent feeds of a few hundred news sources.
These are organized by general topic and are full text searchable. When you find a story that you like, you'll get an automatic "share it" button right next to the story.
Click that and you're on your way!
These are organized by general topic and are full text searchable. When you find a story that you like, you'll get an automatic "share it" button right next to the story.
Click that and you're on your way!
10Writing stories is fun
On CityTools, writing original stories -- whether it's news, opinion, even poetry and fiction -- is easy. Just head over to the content manage and write away!
You can organize it by category, or geography. You can add resources (a link box) to the story.
You can even send the story to publishing partners for possible publication.
You can find more detailed information on writing stories in the docs and howto section.
You can organize it by category, or geography. You can add resources (a link box) to the story.
You can even send the story to publishing partners for possible publication.
You can find more detailed information on writing stories in the docs and howto section.
11Find stories and lists by tags or categories -- you choose!
On some sites you have a rigid taxonomy (a fixed organization of topics) and on other sites you have a fluid taxonomy (people organize content by tags).
Both have their virtues. However, the best way of discovering content is different for different people. Too often sites choose only taxonomy or folksonomy.
At CityTools, we use both so you can find content in whatever way makes the most sense for you. On the left rail you can find the fixed topics for a category of information. On any listing page you can find the tags beneath each item.
Hey, we're all about choice here.
Both have their virtues. However, the best way of discovering content is different for different people. Too often sites choose only taxonomy or folksonomy.
At CityTools, we use both so you can find content in whatever way makes the most sense for you. On the left rail you can find the fixed topics for a category of information. On any listing page you can find the tags beneath each item.
Hey, we're all about choice here.
12Ambient news!
And we're introducing a new way of discovering stories -- ambient news.
At first blush, ambient news looks like simple tag cloud of the kind found on many sites. However, this one is different.
Behind the scenes we're analyzing the flow of stories from several hundred news sources as well asl ALL the content posted on CityTools.
We do an analysis of the text to determine what the hottest current topics are and the hotter the topic, the bigger the text.
But because it's constantly updated, Ambient news is a like an information thermometer, it always shows you what's going on.
Importantly, because of the way that abient news works, if suddenly you see the word ethiopia getting big, you know that something is happening there. In this way you're unlikely to miss a big story.
Also, as we work toward adding an entire suite of products for mobile devices, if you go to www.abmientnews.com you can get a mobile friendly version of our abmient news product.
At first blush, ambient news looks like simple tag cloud of the kind found on many sites. However, this one is different.
Behind the scenes we're analyzing the flow of stories from several hundred news sources as well asl ALL the content posted on CityTools.
We do an analysis of the text to determine what the hottest current topics are and the hotter the topic, the bigger the text.
But because it's constantly updated, Ambient news is a like an information thermometer, it always shows you what's going on.
Importantly, because of the way that abient news works, if suddenly you see the word ethiopia getting big, you know that something is happening there. In this way you're unlikely to miss a big story.
Also, as we work toward adding an entire suite of products for mobile devices, if you go to www.abmientnews.com you can get a mobile friendly version of our abmient news product.
13If all this sounds good...
... why don't you sign up for CityTools? It's free for the public and it doesn't take more than a minute or two.
Use the menu bar to the left to find the link to signup or just click the title of this item.
Use the menu bar to the left to find the link to signup or just click the title of this item.
