Development Seed

Blog

  • May 12, 2010
    Making it easy to import a custom geotaxonomy
    Managing News can geotag items using its default database of 790 locations. But it's also highly extensible, allowing users to import any custom geotaxonomy to tag any location in the world. Following up on my screencast on customizing the maps and...
  • Apr 12, 2010
    With a customizable dashboard, widgets, and a trash bin
    We just released Managing News Beta 9. This version includes a lot of improvements and three new features that we're really excited about: a drag and drop dashboard, widgets that can be embedded in other sites, and an option to hide unwanted news...
  • Mar 4, 2010
    To better tag content in multilingual versions of Managing News
    We just added support for Yahoo! Placemaker's geo-recognition service to Managing News. This is an optional replacement for the default place-term lookup feature and can be enabled and configured in the administration section of Managing News. For...
  • Mar 3, 2010
    Citizen Technology and Election Accountability Conference in Nairobi, Kenya
    National Democratic Institute's conference on Citizen Technology and Election Accountability here in Nairobi just wrapped up. The two days brought together election experts and technologists from all over the region. Much of our discussions focused...
  • Feb 22, 2010
    Lightweight systems for data collection meet powerful tools for analytics
    We can now dynamically map and visualize real time SMS messages in Managing News using the new SlingshotSMS feature. All the code is available on github. This release is particularly exciting for us because it ties together two of our core projects...
  • Feb 19, 2010
    Using custom map tiles and open geo data to build a hyper local news tracker
    Managing News ships with its maps and geotagging features preconfigured for tracking global news on a world map. But user interface improvements in Managing News Beta 7 make it easy to use an alternate map layer and import custom location data so...
  • Feb 17, 2010
    New Beta 7 brings channel tagging, easier customization of maps, and a switch in parsers
    Managing News Beta 7 just rolled out the door. In this release, we've added inline tagging to allow for quickly sorting news into multiple Channels at the same time and improved the customization workflow for maps. Under the hood, we switched...
  • Details on the new Aegir alpha release, how to install it, and what's coming next
    Last week the Aegir project released the latest alpha in the 0.4 release cycle. The most important features of this release are compatibility oriented, and we now have working support for Drupal 7 installs and upgrades, as well as support for...
  • How we increased performance tenfold and used fewer server resources on AfghanistanElectionData.org
    When we were building the Afghanistan election data website, performance was a chief concern. As Eric described in his post, there is enough tabular data in the site to fill a few thousand pages of a PDF document, and getting all the calculations...
  • Dec 21, 2009
    Tracking the #snowpocalypse with Managing News
    Snowpocalypse! DC Metro closed! Plainclothes cop pulls a gun out at a snowball fight! There was a lot of news to keep track of over the weekend. During the record breaking snowstorm, some people went out to build snowmen, others took walks around...