Inside the Outside Lands

On the Western Neighborhoods Project site we’ve accumulated over 2000 images and articles. It’s a lot to keep track of and we personally think it’s hard to find stuff on our site. Sure, sure, our own site search and google do a great job, but we wanted something else, something that might make our content easier to find and tell us a little something about what we’ve done and what we might need to do.

So, we decided to make a map.

http://www.outsidelands.org/maps/

We know what you’re thinking, “There’s only a few spots mapped. What’s the deal?” Please see above. We have over 2000 things to map. That’s where you come in. We’re looking for volunteers to help get these things mapped. (Don’t worry, you can do it from home.) If you want to help with this, go to the page listed above and follow the instructions there.

One of our most popular features on outsidelands.org is our message board. (ok, ok, it’s only popular with about 10 people, but to them it’s REALLY popular!)

Over the years, we have tried to keep the message board very simple and easy to use. Message boards don’t get much simpler than ours.

One thing that has been tough for people is figuring out what messages are new, we have a list of the newest 20 messages on the front page of the site, and now we are please to offer this same list in rss at http://www.outsidelands.org/rss/latestposts.php. (or you can click on that little blue icon there)

What’s RSS, you might ask… It stands for Really Simple Syndication and is essentially a standard format that can distribute content across many platforms.

Huh?

It means that the WNP message board is essentially portable, that you can read it without going all the way to the Western Neighborhoods Project site and clicking through stuff to find what you want.

How do you use it? Just click on the link above, modern browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari, have built in RSS support. Or you can use another site/tool you already use like My Yahoo or Google Reader by pasting the feed url there.

Right now we only have a feed for the latest 20 messages, but if it takes off and you ( those 10 aforementioned people) like it, we may add feeds for each posting topic, or for your favorite message authors, or even based on keywords. All that is dependent on the feedback we get

These days it’s all about collaboration, right? Everybody contributing to the common good and all that. You know, sharing what you have. As the Western Neighborhoods Project forges forward into the web 2.0 world (seems like it should be 3.0 by now, but oh well), we want to find more ways for you to contribute and share what you have.

To that end, we are working on a number of photo sharing projects, the first is a “group” on the photo sharing site Flickr. A Group is where people with Flickr accounts (don’t worry, it’s free) can combine their photos with other people based on a theme (like cats or sunsets or the Grand Canyon). We know there are plenty of people out there taking pictures of the Outside Lands that have some sort of historical connection… So we started the Western Neighborhoods Project Flickr Group Pictures added to the group don’t have to be old, just history-related in some way.

Once the pictures are added to the group, the most recent will be displayed on our site at www.outsidelands.org/photos_flickr.php (this page is updated about every 8 hours or so).

We’re still figuring out how this will work and we’re looking forward to your feedback.