Students: Tara Burns, Sarah Whitmire, Spring Eselgroth, Ioana Lupo, Erynn Reitmayer, Conrad Ottey, Andrew Gallo, Nathan Anderson and Vincent Salgado
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The SmartPHX app was created by NMIL students in spring 2011 in partnership with CityScape, the Downtown Phoenix Partnership and the Phoenix Convention Center to help people discover restaurants, night life and other attractions in downtown Phoenix.
Downloadable to any smartphone, the app functions as a concierge, enabling users to search for restaurants, clubs, arts venues, shopping and sports in downtown Phoenix. It filters search results according to personal preference and current location and tells users which venues are open and where to find nearby parking and public transportation.
To download the app, go to www.smartphx.com on your smartphone’s Web browser. Tap + or the iPhone arrow key and then “Add to Home Screen.” Or download from the Android market.
Students: Cody Shotwell, Elizabeth Shell
Click to download on iTunes
The Arizona Guardian, a one-year-old political Web site, asked the Lab to develop a mobile app that would get people information about their local elected officials wherever they might be. We suggested an approach that would take into consideration that many people don’t know who their elected officials are or how to reach them if they have a complaint or suggestion. We created a data base of all Arizona federal, state and county officials with photographs, committee assignments, Web addresses and contact information. Through the app, users can browse by office – Arizona Senate, for example – or by District, or they can use our GPS locator to find out who represents them based on where the smartphone users are standing.
The app was developed on the Titanium Mobile platform and is available in the iPhone app store. A Droid version of the app is being developed.
View a promotional video.
Students: Crystall Kanyuck, Michael Shawn Tucker
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NewsCloud, which touts itself as a provider of social media software solutions for Facebook, asked the NMIL to help it further develop and test its news community application with real world news organizations. The Lab worked with Gannett Digital and the Detroit Free Press to build several new modules that will help the Free Press digital team better integrate its content into the 1.4-million person Facebook user community in Metropolitan Detroit and to integrate content and community created by those users into Freep.com. Chief concerns included how to engage the community in discussions on Facebook and Freep.com around issues facing Detroit, how to integrate the Freep.com extensive calendar listings into Facebook and how to provide advertising content to the community were chief concerns of Freep.com editors.
The initial set of features is nearing completion. Additional features will be available in summer 2010. The Lab is working to improve the NewsCloud module with new feature sets that better serve news companies and Facebook users.
Students: Mindy Lee, Caleb Welsh
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As Gannett Digital ramped up for the Fall 2010 election cycle, the Lab was asked to help create widgets and applications that would help news consumers get the latest information on candidates for office. The lab created a campaign finance database tracker that Gannett incorporated into 100 of its news sites.
Students: Danny Martinez, Honal Shah
Click for larger image
Tunedig was created in 2007 as a local music social networking site. The idea was to create an area for fans of local music to hear their favorite bands’ music, create a playlist of songs, get band schedules and rate both bands and the venues in which they perform. Bands can update their play dates, post new songs and provide updates to their fans.
Tunedig was sold to the Tucson Daily Star in 2009, which is working to integrate the app into its local music scene around the University of Arizona and other neighborhoods.
Students: Honal Shah, Naresh Sukumar, Gokula Thulasingam
Click to visit site
NMIL was asked by the High School Sports Network to develop a Facebook application that would create communities of fans around varsity sports. With the Shout application, players, students, parents and fans of a team can get schedules, scores, post and share news articles about teams and update each other’s walls with postings, photos and news about their favorite teams.
High School Shout! is a live Facebook application.
Students: Danny Martinez, Christopher Cameron
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Fact checker widgets can help news consumers gauge the truth about political advertising candidate statements. The Lab wanted to create a flexible widget that would allow news companies to help news consumers check the facts on any number of controversial topics – from global warming to immigration or politics. The Fact Checker widget was built in Flex for The Arizona Republic and gives editors an easy interactive tool that they can re-skin with images for any subject.
The application was delivered to The Arizona Republic.
Students: Rebecca Parsons, Travis Grabow
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NMIL was hired by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation to study the adoption and usage of Smartphones by American youth. Students surveyed 1,500 16-to-20-year-olds across the country to understand how they are using the phones. These powerful pocket computers are quickly replacing laptops as the device of choice, and youth are increasingly relying on them to connect with their social networks for everything – from planning a weekend of fun to checking local news.
Click on the image at left to download the study.
Students: Yvonne Zusel, Christine Rogel, Maria Konopken
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The Lab also conducted research for the Gannett Corp. on social media sites to understand 14-to-24-year-olds’ usage habits on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. The survey delved into usage of Facebook apps, whether Twitter was seen as important and what would make them abandon their current social network.
Gannett is using the findings to help guide its social media interactions and project development within social media and to formulate its mobile development plans.
Students: Sophia Fuka, Desiree Castellano, Sukanya Vijayakumar, Danny Martinez, Soumya Tilak, Mindy Lee, Allison Seligman, Shannen Lloyd
The Arizona Republic approached the New Media Innovation Lab for ideas on how to create a barter area for moms to exchange goods and services for free. Initially, the thought was to expand on existing barter/trade discussion boards on the “Moms Like Me” area. However, we enlarged that idea to create MamaMarket, which is positioned to provide a secure and safer place online for parents to swap products and services with each other. The Lab conducted several rounds of interviews with moms in the Valley to get their take on what they would want in such a site and what concerns they had with existing community sites and lists.
