The contest is running three rounds for the first time this year, with the first round focused on "networks". Winning projects, announced at the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference late yesterday, include mobile data sharing, searchable live streams, a community "recovery dashboard" for during disasters, and a social analytics dashboard.
Two of the projects - SignalNoi.se and Watchup - are being funded by the Knight Enterprise Fund "as a means for investing in commercial start-up ventures".
The winning six projects came from almost 1,100 applications sent in to the challenge. But the organisers said they will be funding other entries "through our new prototype fund", which can still be applied for.
The second news challenge, which is focused on data, is also still collecting entries, but only until Thursday (21 June). This round is “looking for new ways of collecting, understanding, visualising and helping the public use the large amounts of information generated each day”.
The contest will announce the winners of the third round in September and more information on the third challenge will be announced later this year.
Here is a round-up of the winning projects for the "networks" round, as outlined by the Knight Foundation here.
Behavio, by Nadav Aharony, Alan Gardner, Cody Sumter
$355,000
"Behavio will enable users to collect and anonymously share data from their mobile phones. It will collect data such as video, movement, location and available light. Users can then analyse, visualsze and draw insights from that data."
PeepolTV, by Felipe Hausser, Jeffrey Warren
$360,000
"PeepolTV will build an interactive collection of every livestream on the planet, searchable by map, tags, semantic analysis and other attributes. The project aims to help users document events as they take place, for example by tracking a protest through a collection of livestreams shown on a map of the area."
Recovers.org, by Alvin Liang, Caitria O’Neill, Morgan O’Neill
$340,000
"Caitria, Morgan and their CTO Alvin Liang are building tools to help communities get back on their feet more quickly and effectively after a disaster. They’ll be working on a recovery dashboard that will help coordinate volunteers, physical donations, monetary donation with community needs and to improve communication among local governments, aid groups and others who want to help."
Tor Project, by Andrew Lewman, Karen Reilly
$320,000
"Tor will use News Challenge funds to develop open source software designed to protect journalists. It will adapt some of its secure web browser and design a set of tools with and for journalists working in dangerous zones."
SignalNoi.se , by Mohamed Nanabhay, Haroon Meer
"SignalNoi.se, [Nanabhay's] first venture since leaving Al Jazeera, is a collaboration with Haroon Meer. They’re building a dashboard that will make it easier for newsrooms, and potentially consumers, to understand how stories emerge and spread."
Watchup, by Adriano Farano, Jonathan Lundell
"Watchup is an iPad app that helps users find, collect and interact with video news content. Watchup is the latest venture from Adriano Farano, who previously founded and ran European news sites OWNI and Cafe Babel."
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