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The Future is Here: outside.in Radar Now Powered by Mozilla GeodeOctober 9

Two days ago Mozilla Labs announced a cool new plugin for Firefox named Geode. Geode is a simple tool that makes your Firefox browser location-aware, allowing it to know where you are at any given moment. Mozilla built Geode to fit their vision of the future of web browsing, which they describe like so:

You’ve arrived in a new city, a new continent, a new coffee shop. You don’t really know where you are, and are looking for a good place to eat. You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favorite review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions there.

We at outside.in thought that sounded like an exciting idea, so we decided to integrate Geode into Radar to complete the other half of that picture. And now it’s done, live on the site, and the future that Mozilla imagines is here. As of today when you use Firefox with your Geode plugin installed, Radar immediately picks up your location and plops you in that exact area, showing you the latest headlines and stories around you.

Now you don’t even need to know where you are to get the news around you.

Love that web - keeps getting better and better. We’re looking forward to more great stuff like this from Mozilla.

You can download your Geode plu

GeoToolkit News: StoryMaps for SidebarsOctober 8

Great news! Today we updated StoryMaps to work better in your site’s sidebar. Instead of opening a wide bubble when you click on a place marker, maps under 300 pixels now show the stories in a list view that’s cleaner and much more user-friendly for narrow sidebars.

If you already have a StoryMap that’s 300 pixels wide or smaller, it has been automatically updated with our new release. If not, check it out! Sign up for GeoToolkit and grab the code to put a StoryMap on your site.

Want to see StoryMaps in the wild? Check out: http://www.riverwestneighborhood.org

Dept of Blogiology 101: PhiladelphiaOctober 7

This is our fifth in a series of posts where we explore top neighborhoods, blogs, and bloggers in cities around the U.S.  In previous posts we’ve covered Buffalo, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Boston.

This week we investigate Philadelphia, most famous for the Liberty Bell, Fresh Prince and home to our friend, MC Blame the Kid. And for a bit of geeky history: did you know that Philadelphia is where the first ever online transaction took place? Mr. Phil Brandenberger, who lived in Philadelphia, bought a “compact disc” (remember those?) from the Net Market Company, based in Nashua, New Hampshire (via PhillyWired). 

Bloggiest Philadelphia Neighborhoods:

1. South Philadephia
   
   

Follow the McCain-Obama Presidential Town Hall Debate on Outside.inOctober 6

Follow the much anticipated Presidential Town Hall debate taking place tomorrow held in Belmont University, Tennessee. This is the third of four debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, leading up to the general election on November 4th. It will be hosted by everyone’s favorite NBC news anchor, Tom Brokaw.

Great local coverage provided by the Tennessean and political bloggers Enclave and Nashville 21.

Follow them and other voices on our Debate tagged stories and Nashville and Belmont University pages.

Noted: GeoToolkit Featured StoryMap usersOctober 6

This weekend we noticed two great urban design sites using StoryMap.

Portland Architecture a blog about “design in the Rose City” and,  DC MetroCentric which covers “New Buildings, Construction, Destruction, Planning, Real Estate, and Gossip as it happens in the Nation’s Capital”. DC MetroCentric wrote a really nice post about StoryMaps as well. The StoryMaps look great, one in a sidebar and one in its own section called “MapIt”

We also want to give a shout out to New Columbia Heights, one of the first StoryMap adapters, for helping to spread the word.

If you’ve launched a StoryMap on your site let us know.