Archive for the ‘YulNews’ Category
Citoyen 1 - SQ 0
August 24th, 2007
Micro-note sur un bon exemple de ce que le media citoyen peu offrir. La vérité absolue. Excellent reportage sur Cyberpresse.
Posted in Quebec, YulNews, media | Comments (0)
What is YulNews…?
August 23rd, 2007
Like I mentioned in the past, I met Heri at the latest DemoCamp and he strongly suggested that I open up about YulNews so here I go. I will attempt to explain you how I came up with the idea and what is my vision regarding YulNews. There are many things to say about my project and my long term vision can’t be explained in a few words so I’ll stick to my short term version.
I work in downtown Montreal and I often see newsworthy events like gatherings, accidents and (but rarely) small crimes, fires and so on. I often found myself in a position where I could be a “news reporter” and could report this to some local media. Then again I told myself that they couldn’t care less about a gathering or a protest. Big media companies like big stories. Perhaps they don’t care but I do. So that’s when I decided to talk to a few friends and all of them said the idea was good. None of them knew about anything similar so the opportunity was interesting.
Before I go on, I can already hear some people saying “Oh but there’s this XYZ site which is doing what you’re doing as well..!†Yes, there are a couple of similar sites out there, mainly NowPublic which I didn’t know until I started investigating for similar ideas. There are some other hyper-local sites as well, so let me explain you what YulNews is about and what it isn’t about as I believe I’m on something neat and new.
Without going in the details, YulNews is about social news but with a twist. I like to think of it as a “You Tube for news”. It’s multilingual and international. The plan is to support every city in the world. If a city is not in the database, any user will be able to add a new city.
YulNews is about individuals, ethnic groups, communities, businesses, schools and so on. Of course people can post their own news but what’s interesting is that others can participate and interact with the news thread, creating at the end some sort of timeline about that particular story. So the coverage keeps going on and is done by anyone willing to cover the story. You see everyone’s point of view, their side of the story and of course, their own media (the usual trio of audio, video and pictures). I guess this could be seen as CNN meets blogs where users can add their own tidbits about the story, thus making it more reliable, more interesting and thus bringing a new side to it (which the original reporter probably never thought of).
So for example, if someone writes about a public transportation strike, someone else could add to the news thread that schools are being impacted as well or that taxi’s revenues are skyrocketing and so on. I hope you now see the interaction possible between stories and how, in the end, this creates interesting, thoughtful news.
But this is just the basics. You can also create your own channels, but not only about your own news. It can be about any news you find interesting. Let’s say you enjoy environmental issues, you can create a channel and add your favourite stories to this channel thus making it an environmental channel. Think of it as a “blog of a blog” where your channel could be made entirely of other people’s news. Again, I haven’t seen this yet.
If you want to go further, you can create a group. A group can be anything from an end user to a multinational corporation. Let’s say you are a Spanish speaking person living in Toronto. You could create your own mini-portal where people could post local news in Spanish. In other words, this is the equivalent of the ethnic community newspaper but online. There are some independent local ethnics sites but as far as I know, there is no site where anyone can create its own portal. Then again, it’s not limited to ethnic communities. Schools, businesses, public organisations, cities and other entities can post their news online as well. Nothing stops the University of Harvard or the city of Montreal from having their own portal as well.
YulNews is also a lot about freedom of press where people are not afraid to discuss about sensitive topics. Some might say that the media is controlled by too few entities and perhaps a form of “self” censorship is required by some journalists. Basically, I want everyone to have his/her voice over what they think is important. Be it a Montrealer witnessing an accident, a soldier on a battlefield or a Chinese citizen complaining about local pollution. If it matters to you then I want you to “be the news”!
So what’s YulNews NOT about? Well it’s not a social bookmark site like Digg or Slashdot although you will be allowed to keep track of your favourite news and vote on the most informative or insightful news. Voting, along tagging are in my opinion unavoidable. Some people see sites like Digg as social media while I see them as social bookmarking site. There is nothing purely social about digg and definitively nothing local about it.
Well I hope everyone had enough information to feel what YulNews is about. The project is currently in “alpha mode” and I would like to hear from people wanting to experience it. Also, if you have any ideas, please go ahead as I’m open to feedback.
Posted in Startups, YulNews, business, social network | Comments (2)
YulNews is slowly accepting testers
August 16th, 2007
I’m very proud to announce that YulNews, one of my start-ups, is currently accepting a limited number of beta alpha testers. At this point, only people who can actively participate will be accepted.
This means people who can provide feedback, bring ideas, test new features and of course, participate by writing new articles and events.
If you would like to participate, please visit the web site here.
Posted in Startups, YulNews, media | Comments (0)
Testers wanted..!
July 9th, 2007
Beta testers wanted! Yes I know this is pretty rare (or is it?) but I’m looking for people who can help me test and improve my latest startup. While I can’t say much at the moment, I need people who enjoy talking about things that matters to them (regardless of the subject). I’d say the closest match would be some sort of blogger-journalist.
If you want to change the world as others read it, please contact me at info-at -yulnews.com. I only demand that you participate actively as this is not a public beta invitation (it’s more like a private alpha). If you just want to take a peak, let me know and I will arrange a tour for you.
Posted in Startups, YulNews, business, internet, jobs | Comments (0)
Introducing YulNews
July 9th, 2007
Time has come to talk about my latest startup. I know I dropped some hints here and there but today is the day where I want to come clean, sort of speaking. I plan to launch a new site named YulNews and while the final details are still “secret”, I can say that it will change the way people know about what’s going on around them.
I should also mention that this site has no affiliation with yulbuzz, yulstart or yulbiz. I just like the fact that “yul” means Montreal (as in airport code) and “You will” at the same time. More on that later but I guess I already gave enough hints so far…
Posted in Startups, YulNews, business, ideas, internet, media | Comments (3)
