Reinventing the News: Caffeinated Campus Map

As part of our experimentation with GoogleMaps, my class has collaborated on an interactive presentation of all the coffee shops around campus. In contrast to the plenitude of liquor stores near my Mission Hill apartment, there's a sad lack of coffee shops. It may look bleak with only 7-11 and Dunkin' Donuts, but JP Licks provides a nice refuge for people who want to enjoy their cup of coffee instead of getting a quick and cheap caffeine fix before the morning commute.

JP Licks, named after the Jamaica Plain area of Boston, is known more for its ice cream than coffee, but the cafe has a wide range of Fair Trade Organic styles. $1.85 will get you a medium coffee, and the place has WiFi and enough room to comfortably sprawl out. The staff, while usually hanging out in the back, is very friendly, and there was a good mix of college students and young professionals enjoying a Tuesday afternoon with a book in hand or a computer in front of them. While JP Licks will never become a cafe destination, it's a good place to get away from your TV and get the needed caffeine to finish that last minute paper.

Reinventing the News: Maps

I'm not obsessed with celebrities the way some blog-readers are, but I definitely get the occasional kick from the oddities of a celebrity only discovered when their army of PR people aren't around. Enter GawkerStalker. When I lived in Manhattan, I would check the GawkerStalker map to see how interesting (or boring) celebrities found the neighborhoods I lived and worked.

The beauty of this map-based celebrity sighting system as opposed to new stories is that these Google Map presentations are non-linear. Like me checking GawkerStalker around my neighborhood, the reader can enter a map news presentation anywhere pertinent to them. GawkerStalker also adds another level of audience interaction: the sighting tips are submitted by local Manhattanites with their own analysis, usually interesting and slightly funny. These are updated daily. Of course, leave it to PR flacks to work Stalker for their own benefit: with the launch of her new show soon, many overtly nice sightings of Whitney Port starting pouring in to Stalker presumably from her PR hacks. Gawker did not post them.