Guardian's n0tice launches open journalism toolkit

The Guardian's online noticeboard project n0tice has today launched an open journalism toolkit. The site has opened its API and content posted on n0tice can now be integrated into a digital news organisation's content management system. The free toolkit promises a host of features that can be utilised by news sites, including the ability to create crowdmaps based on information posted on n0tice. The Guardian has already done this by using n0tice to crowdmap the Olympic torch relay. There are several other examples, including Britain's best bike rides. The n0tice website describes how the Olympic torch map (pictured below) was created using content from three sites. "Content from the Guardian, Flickr and n0tice was all fed into a beautiful, custom-built interactive map automatically. When people posted pictures to the torch route noticeboard those images then appeared with the other data on the interactive map on the Guardian web site." The site has a useful tutorial in how to create a crowdmap using n0tice. The open journalism toolkit has many possibilities for hyperlocal, local and national sites. The platform describes how n0tice offers publishers "a free off-the-shelf solution to some of the digital newsroom's current challenges including crowdmapping, mobile publishing, liveblogging and collaborating with users". The platform also allows sites to take a feed of the content they have posted and collated on their n0tice noticeboard. "Feeds of news reports can be pumped into WordPress, for example, or event posts can be fed into a calendar app. You could also create an 'editor's picks' feed of posts selected by your own staff and then tighten the moderation controls so that only posts with no flags get sent to you." The idea for n0tice was sparked by a Guardian hack day and was first announced a year ago. It aims to bring in revenues for the Guardian and allows the noticeboard creator, such as hyperlocal news site, to make money via a share of the classified advertising. Journalism.co.uk  .