“Guangzhou Supports You!” is a new crowdsourced, hyper-local online photography activity in Guangzhou, China.

The Wall Street Journal recently produced a fascinating video covering the new world of peer to peer finance which features Hub Culture’s Ven, which can be used both online and off.

The Czech Republic’s PPF Group is preparing to launch a series of “connected cafes” in several cities across the country next month in an attempt to link journalists both physically and digitally with their reading public. The joint ventures – part coffee shop and part newsroom – are the latest experiment in the growing field of hyperlocal journalism, a shift in thinking about newspapers that seeks to capture niche audiences through extremely specific and relevant reporting. This project aims to bring the idea of responsive coverage and community feedback into the realms of the real time.
This move away from a [...]

A recent New York Times article reports on a number of start ups that are geotagging news stories in communities normally underrepresented in major papers.  EveryBlock, Outside.in (co-founded by PSFK Conference speaker John Geraci), PlaceBlogger and Patch are each bringing together various news sources to compile a site dedicated to your community or even specific city block.  Many of the sites draw on publicly available information like crime reports or restraurant health code violations and brings you the most up-to-date information in one place.
Chicago-based EveryBlock has quickly expanded to 11 major cities around the US and brings together blog posts [...]

The New York Times has branched out into the “hyperlocal” news market with two new websites that cover very small, specific areas. Launched last week, The Local is a simple, blog-like repository of local news and events. The Local acts as a kind of digital, small town newspaper that filters out all the national and international news to only deliver what’s relevant to your corner of the world.
At the moment, The Local is being field-tested in two areas, Maplewood, Milburn and South Orange, New Jersey and in the Fort Greene-Clinton hill area of Brooklyn. They each have small staffs, and [...]