A Los Angeles-based startup with a mission to enable multimedia storytelling in communities worldwide that otherwise lack necessary resources and training was awarded a $200,000 grant by the Knight Foundation on Wednesday.

The Tiziano Project‘s Tiziano 360 project was one of 16 ideas to win a prestigious Knight News Challenge grant awarded to fund internationally relevant innovative media and digital news concepts.

Tiziano 360 is intended to help communities better tell their stories by building an accessible, HTML5-based multimedia storytelling platform. The next iteration of the project is based on 2010’s Kurdistan 360, for which Tiziano Project won an award at SXSW.

The Tiziano 360 project is described in the Knight press release:

Using visually dynamic, multimedia storytelling, the Tiziano Project provides communities with the equipment, training and web platform needed to report on stories that affect their residents’ lives. Tiziano will build an improved platform based on the award-winning project http://360.tizianoproject.org/kurdistan/. Using HTML5, the platform will display the work of professional and community journalists and will enable news organizations, community groups and individuals to easily manage digital content for mobile and tablet devices. The project will also build an interactive map to serve as a hub for projects developing similar sites in their communities and enable direct communication between these communities and their audiences.

Learn more about Tiziano Project in the video below:

Originally posted at LAist on June 22, 2011

UPDATE: Just got an email that my funds went through! After a whole month SOTRU hit its Kickstarter fundraising goal with just two minutes to spare! Congrats!

Having just heard that one of my recent Kickstarter investments, CicLAvia, has been funded, a new project has conveniently crossed my path and if you’re into it too, you’ve got a few days left to chip in a few bucks.

State of the Re:Union (SOTRU) is a public media show that seeks to unify its audience by telling the stories of real people through an innovative exploration of a city, detailing how things come together and what pulls them apart. Each radio episode, host Al Letson travels to a different American city or town and explores how community is created. Who are the people who help bring it together? What are the issues they face? How does the culture of an area shape the people and vice versa? Through a unique mix of storytelling, cultural excavation, music and multimedia, SOTRU brings community to life. — Read more | website | Facebook | Twitter.

Kickstarter is a groundbreaking concept in microdonations and in awesome website and community. You pledge to donate the amount you choose — with great incentive rewards for various dollar amounts — and the money is taken via your Amazon.com account only if the fundraising goal is met.

State of the Re:Union is closing in on 50% funded with only 4 days remaining (after a month on the site) so let’s give it a boost by August 21st!

Here’s a piece on First Avenue in Minneapolis from the State of the Re:Union YouTube channel:

Updates on other projects I’ve invested in: CicLAvia aims for a city-sanctioned bicycle takeover of the LA streets at least one day a year (inspired by ciclovía), and will take place this year along Wilshire Boulevard on October 10 (10.10.10). Another recent Kickstarter project I backed has been funded as well — however, the Invisible Children Take Away Shows in Uganda trip has been postponed following a terrorist attack on the final day of World Cup that killed Invisible Children volunteer Nate Henn (R.I.P.).

Thanks, Rekha, for pointing this out!

But regardless of the focus of my efforts (or career), my pet causes persistently tug at my soul.

What do I mean by “pet causes?” It has nothing to do with pets. Or rocks for that matter.

photo by Claudio Gennari shared via Creative Commons license.

When I was a freshman at University of Iowa and finally arrived at the age of independence, I thought: “We’re on the verge of a revolution and I’m ready, along with my new-found peers and old high school buds, to take on the world and turn it on its head.” I was pretty much like every other 18-year-old in that respect.

But as we grow and the world around us invariably and abruptly changes in both inexplicable and awesome ways, we start to think we might need to guard or cherish that which we find essential, lest it gets taken from younger generations. After all, it doesn’t take a long time at university to realize that you’ve got it better than many.

What I saw growing up and discovering the world in the mid- to late-’90s was a U.S. carelessly at the top of its game on the verge of imminent denouement and with a widening gap between the haves and have nots. The dumbing down of our nation had begun spiraling out of control and it wasn’t even the Bush 43 administration yet.

I began to get angry about certain things that I was afforded yet others were not. Nothing extreme, nothing impossible, just middle class luxuries that I refused to take for granted and to this day hope to see universally available – at least on a hyperlocal level.

My Pet Causes:

• The Arts in Public Education
• Internet (specifically broadband) for All

Arts in Education:

I learned to read music at age five – piano lessons. By second grade we played the recorder in music class. I probably had a crush on my third grade art teacher. Didn’t we all?

But by the time I got to high school, art and music classes were already getting stripped from public schools thanks to a budget crunch. And they never would recover. Fast forward to 2010 and it’s beyond blaming TV, video games, or the internet. Creativity is going out of style. It’s no longer an option. This is bad.

Broadband for All

I’m sick enough right now about LA public libraries shutting down every Sunday and Monday. The fact that we can’t bolster our society by at least subsidizing access to high-speed internet is a goddamn shame. I’ve reported on all the OECD broadband surveys in which the U.S. consistently shows up in the bottom half. Obama has presented a plan. Let’s make it happen… and more.

What you can do:

A little bit goes a long way and just by reading this far, you’ve (at least subconsciously) helped my pet causes. Please visit the following websites for more info and to take action:

• Americans for the Arts – http://www.artsusa.org/ – and on Causes.
• Quincy Jones – “Arts Education in America“
• Digital Divide — Networkforgood, SpeedMatters.org
• The Atlantic — “Liberty and Broadband for All“

What are your pet causes?

The greatest surprise performance at the 24-hour Live Earth was not Kanye West and John Mayer joining the Police on “Message in a Bottle.” Hell, no. It was Spinal Tap (reunited) with some help from Metallica (they actually laugh) bringing down London’s Wembley Stadium with hits like “Stonehenge” and “Big Bottom.” Madonna’s gypsy-hobo-punk performance — fully choreographed — of “La Isla Bonita” with Eugene and Serge from Gogol Bordello was also surprisingly excellent (watch after the jump).

MSN reports that the Live Earth Web simulcast resulted a single-day record 9 million streams launched. It will be interesting to see if it experiences continued traffic over the next few weeks as the Live 8 site did in 2005 — before viral video and YouTube embeds became viewer’s choice.

Good LA Times coverage of Live Earth here.

12 more videos after the jump include Live Earth performances from Smashing Pumpkins, The Police, Roger Waters, Beastie Boys, Corinne Bailey Rae & John Legend, Metallica, Snoop Dogg, and more…

Madonna & Gogol Bordello: “La Isla Bonita” – Wembley Stadium, London

Beastie Boys: “Sure Shot / So Whatcha Want” – Wembley Stadium, London:

Corinne Bailey Rae & John Legend: “Mercy, Mercy Me / What’s Goin’ On” – Wembley Stadium, London:

Roger Waters: “Happiest Days of Our LIves / Another Brick in the Wall” – Giants Stadium (w/ flying pig & chorus of Jersey kids singing with British accents):

Smashing Pumpkins: “United States” (best cut on new record!) – Giants stadium, NJ:

Jorge Ben Jor – Rio de Janeiro:

Genesis (yep, reunited): “Turn It On” – Wembley Stadium, London:

Yusuf Islam: “Where Do the Children Play?” – Hamburg, Germany:

Snoop Dogg: “What’s My Name?” – Hamburg, Germany:

Metallica: “Enter Sandman” – Wembley Stadium, UK

Nunatak: “How Many People” — Survey Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctica:

The Police attempt “Message in a Bottle” w/ Kanye West & John mayer – Giants Stadium, NJ:

originally posted here.

Take action here, here and here. The Washington Post has a great article. D-Day will effectively crush Internet radio as we know it on July 15th — unless we act.

As if it’s not fascist enough that USC (where I’m at grad school) has an actual “free speech zone,” which would imply that such freedoms are not ensured anywhere else on campus, yesterday a small group protesting the schools use of sweatshop labor for their products was given 10 minutes to disperse, or else:

The sit-in began about 11 a.m. and ended after the students were handed personally addressed letters that said, “I want to inform you that you have been placed on interim suspension from USC. ” The letters outlined eight charges of misconduct.

The three-page letters, signed by Denzil J. Suite, assistant vice president for student affairs, said that “effective 5 p.m. on April 10, 2007, you may not return to the University of Southern California.” It also added that “if you reside in university-owned housing, you must vacate your residence by 9 a.m. on April 11.”

They even CALLED the protesters parents! Unbelievable. Shame, shame, SC. Go here to support the efforts of SCALE.

check it

Original post here.

It’s not mandatory to hold one’s blogging standards up to the those embedded in the rigid ethics taught at a Journalism and Communication school, but inviting someone so painfully lacking in journalistic integrity to speak as a role model to an admiring student body?

I’m pretty sure Annenberg didn’t invite Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass after they were unceremoniously canned for their breaches of journalistic integrity.

The students who would have filled Room 207 at Annenberg for this event may not have been aware that Hilton is the defendant in an ongoing $7.6M copyright infringement lawsuit. While I’m a strong proponent of fair use, and believe copyright rules need to be revised for the digital age, Hilton’s fair use defense doesn’t stand a chance. He stole copyrighted, non-Commons-licensed photos from multiple journalists, bloggers, news agencies and photographers alike and re-used them on his hugely popular (and profitable) Web site. More recently, he was sued for posting topless photos of Jennifer Aniston.

Had he not been too chicken to show up (and I hope he reconsiders) I would give my colleagues the opportunity to ask as many questions as they want: how does it feel to party with Paris and Linds? OMG what are you gonna wear when you host MTV’s Australian Music Video Awards? After all, it was billed not as a discussion on journalistic ethics but as “An Insider’s Take on Celebrity Culture, Blogging, and Gays in Hollywood.”

But I sure hope I wouldn’t be the only one (I’d wait until the end of the hour) to out him as a decent model for snuffing out gossip and aspiring young celeb-bloggers, but an even better example of journalism-gone-wrong and how ethics and laws still apply as equally to the blogosphere as they do to print and radio/TV.

photo by Mai Le via flickr.