NowPublic adds geotagging, lands Emmy nom  |  March 2, 2009  

Vancouver-based NowPublic is already well known for deploying Web 2.0 technologies to great effect: the crowd-sourced, participatory news network has garnered praise from Time magazine.

Last year it won a PICK 20 innovation award and now the company can add an Emmy nomination to its credit list.

NowPublic received the nomination in the New York Emmy Award’s Advanced Media: Interactivity category. Landing the nod was a new NowPublic feature called Scan that integrates geographic data from various sources, such as microblogs. This allows the site’s users to see which NowPublic members are near a given story location, track who is micro-blogging about a topic and where the person is located, see when the most activity on the topic occurred, flag content as being of high quality, etc.

This functionality will add depth and relevance to any big news story, such as the recent ditching of a plane in New York’s Hudson River and is analogous to the way advanced photo-stitching technology created an enduring image of President’s Obama’s inauguration. Both use advanced Web 2.0 features to add a new dimension to public events.

And while we’re on the topic of Canadian Web 2.0 innovators, the nomination closes soon on this year’s PICK 20, so if you know someone who deserves to be recognized, get nominating.

Peter Wolchak